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1 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






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Dominion and Power 



Studies in 

Spiritual Science 

BY 

CHARLES BRODIE PATTERSON 

AUTHOR OP 

"Seeking the Kingdom," "Beyond the Clouds," "Th« 

Library of Health," " New Thought Essays," 

"The Will to be Well," 

and Editor of Mind 



Upland Farms Alliance 

OSCAWANA-ON-HUDSON 
N. Y. 



»CXI)\ 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
One Copy Received 

DEC 19 1905 


Copyrigfit Entry 
(Do/- ^ 1 90 f 
CLASS O. XXc, No, 

COPY A. 



tk> 



Copyright, 1901, 

by 

Chaki.es Bkodib Pattbmom. 



^ 



PREFACE 

The prayer of the world to-day is for "light, 
more light." The mind of man is reaching out 
for a more comprehensive knowledge of the 
laws which regulate and control life. 

There is a wave of spiritual thought and feel- 
ing that is extending to the uttermost parts of 
the earth. While the ancient faiths are passing 
away, and man no longer accepts his religion 
because of the authority of any book or dog- 
matic creed, yet there is a new authority coming 
into life, such as the world has never known 
save in rare instances. 

The authority is the realized presence of God 
in the individual life of man. Where one feels 
with the heart, and knows with the mind, and is 
not in any way dependent upon any or all au- 
thority, the way of life is illumined by the light 
within. The kingdom of God is found as a con- 
scious reality in the soul of man, and the indi- 
vidual soul becomes conscious of both dominion 
and power and rules its own kingdom. 

This little book is written with the fervent 



desire, on the part of the writer, to throw some 
light on the way of life; or perhaps better still, 
to call into conscious existence latent powers of 
being that are resident in the soul of "every 
man that cometh into the world." If it fulfils 
this object to one or to many souls, it has ac- 
complished its mission. If it tends to make the 
burdens of life lighter by bringing new joy or 
hope into any life, it will more than repay the 
author for the time and labor expended in 

writing it. 

Faithfully yours, 

CHARLES BRODIE PATTERSON. 



THE SCHUYLER, 

59 West 45th Street, 

New York City. 




CONTENTS 

The Secret of Power, 9 

Three Planes of Development, • . 21 

The Tree of Knowledge, 30 

The Purpose of Life, ...... 41 

The Mistakes of Life, „ 47 

Finding One's Self .51 

How to Conserve Force, 56 

Faith in Character -Building, . . . . 65 
Hope in Character-Building, b • . • • 71 
Love in Character-Building, . . . . • 74 

Prayer 77 

Breath, . . . i . 88 

Success— Part One, ....... 102 

Success— Part Two, 110 

The Equality of the Sexes, 121 

Marriage, e 132 

The Rights of Children 143 

Temptation as a Means of Growth, . . . 153 
Psychic Development, ....«,. 160 

Living the Soul-Life, 174 

Immortality, 183 

Dominion and Power, 205 



DOMINION AND POWER 



THE SECRET OF POWER 

"There is a twofold power active in man — an invisibly 
acting or vital power, and a visibly acting mechanical force. 
* * * This physical body is not merely an instrument for 
divine power, but it is also the soil from which that which is 
immortal in man receives its strength. * * * Terrestrial 
powers are moving in us; but if we are reborn in the spirit 
then will we move in celestial powers. * * * He who 
trusts in his own power will fail, and become a victim of his 
own vanity. * * * Only when man realizes the presence 
of God in him will he begin his infinite life, and step from the 
realm of evanescent illusions into that of permanent truth." 

— Paracelsus. 

11 Deep within our own souls is the spirit of the living God, 
the same which in the beginning moved upon the face of the 
waters; a divine trend in us, leading us whither we know not, 
until our eyes are opened and we recognize that this divine 
trend is our truest Self, more real, more powerful than our 
insignificant surface personality. * * * It is the divine 
life within, the ' Power not ourselves that makes for righteous- 
ness,' of which we must become aware." 

— Harriet B. Bradbury. 

If we accept the law of the survival of the fit- 
test as conclusive, we must consider Nature as 
being in one sense thoroughly heartless ; that is, 
that natural law decrees the destruction of all 
that is weak and the preservation of all that is 



io Dominion and Power 

strong. Yet for countless ages there has been 
a constructive work going on, having for its aim 
the perfecting of a habitation for living crea- 
tures, beginning with the tiniest conceivable — 
each habitation becoming ever more complex 
and complete.; hence, what we see in the phe- 
nomena of growth is not the destruction of life 
at all. It is the destruction of imperfect form, 
in order that the inner living entity may begin 
anew the construction of a more ideal body. 
This process continues until each form is com- 
plete and perfect, when a new type is evolved, 
because there is mind-action in even the very 
lowest forms of life. When nourishment is re- 
quired there is intelligence enough to draw, or 
to cause the entity to reach out after, the needed 
sustenance; and if Nature has not provided the 
means of locomotion, the latent powers of the 
creature are then forced into activity. 

Let us consider man, the highest of earth's 
species, on his three planes of development. 
First, we will take two individuals living on the 
purely animal (or physical) plane of being. Both 
contain within themselves the intelligence of all 
that has gone before, from the protoplasm up to 
the human; all the intelligence of the whole 
animal creation is epitomized in these two men. 
So they start alike, both having the same amount 
of intelligence; yet in time we find that one has 



The Secret of Power n 

traveled very much farther than the other even 
on their own plane. Again, some persons are 
born into this world under the most favorable 
circumstances, while others begin life under the 
most unfavorable conditions imaginable; yet 
now and then we find that the latter will succeed 
in life where the former will make a failure of 
every undertaking. 

We can not look to the purely spiritual side 
of life from the animal plane, and account for 
success or failure from that point of view; but 
we must go right to the physical — to man's 
sense-nature — to find the determining point. 
Take two individuals, then, in whom the sense- 
nature is equally developed, and who possess a 
perfect development of the animal functions. 
We find in one case a degree of moderation — 
that is, a certain amount of temperance in the 
use of material things — which is missing in the 
other. Again, we find that one has a degree 
of perseverance that is not possessed by the 
other. 

The purely animal quality known as instinct 
is not a much higher attribute when manifested 
by man; but when man accepts the guidance of 
his instinct he is led into the right course of 
action. When a man tries to do a thing- and 
persists in the effort even after repeated failures, 
his success is inevitable. It may at first seem very 



12 Dominion and Power 

difficult, yet his instinct forbids discouragement. 
On this plane of existence we find men who are 
most successful — who develop and express genu- 
ine power because they follow its true lines. 

It is only through the right use of each of our 
talents that new things come into existence. 
Because a thing seems difficult we are not justi- 
fied in passing it by in favor of something that 
seems easier. Certain difficult things come to 
all of us, because we are equal to the occasion — 
otherwise they would not come. When a very 
hard problem is presented to us, let us realize 
that we have the power to solve it; otherwise 
we shall make a failure of life. We should per- 
severe — try to form a clear idea of what we wish 
to accomplish, and get it thoroughly fixed in 
mind. We must not scatter our force by turn- 
ing to something else that seems much easier. 

Even on the physical plane, therefore, we find 
that the man who uses both moderation and 
perseverance accomplishes more than the one 
who is lacking in either of these qualities. Lit- 
tle by little, the man who uses moderation in all 
he undertakes — who perseveres and keeps firmly 
in mind the thing he wishes to accomplish — is 
certain to succeed. Moreover, because of the 
concentration of his force, he is becoming strong 
mentally and physically, for mental strength is 
manifested in and through the physical. The 



The Secret of Power 13 

other sort of man becomes weaker each day in- 
stead of stronger, and finally Nature abandons 
the attempt to utilize his powers in her economy. 
We say that a tree is cut down because it en- 
cumbers the ground. This means that the life 
that has come into existence has not used its in- 
telligence to its fullest capacity; that it must go 
out of its physical form and later begin the work 
of construction anew. Some people are spirit- 
ually lazy, others are mentally lazy, and some 
are physically lazy. We can not feel strong nor 
equal to the duties to which we are assigned if 
we are victims of laziness — a condition that 
always results from failure to use power in the 
right way. 

Let us examine the result of the right use of 
power on all three planes. We can trace the 
operation of the evolutionary principle in all 
forms of life, from the lowest creatures known 
to science up almost to the manifestations of 
divinity; hence, we should be able to discern 
the reasons why evolution should take place. 
We are born with certain appetites and desires ; 
also with instincts and a degree of intelligence 
that knows how to use those qualities in the 
right way. Some people say that the sense- 
nature of man is not good, and that it must be 
overcome or repressed; others insist that the 
intellectual side of man's being is of no conse- 



14 Dominion and Power 

quence — that the spiritual side alone is impor- 
tant. Yet the fact remains that every phase of 
man's life — from the lowest sense plane to the 
highest spiritual plane — is a vital factor of his 
being; but its beneficence is dependent upon its 
right use. 

We know by instinct that it is essential to our 
growth that we should construct in one way or 
another. After a time, through this effort, comes 
the development of intellect, by which man has 
power to think and reason. The physical should 
always be subordinate to the intellectual; for to 
the degree that man is intemperate in the indul- 
gence of his passions his mental force is reduced. 
To dissipate energy on one plane is to deprive 
the others of strength. 

Man knows that as he perseveres he succeeds, 
He knows also that, as he thinks clearly, con^ 
cisely, and logically, he accomplishes his under- 
takings. Now, the mentally strong man will 
bring his force to bear on one thing at a time, 
not on many things at once. Thus will he be- 
come truly constructive. 

Besides the virtues of concentration, modera- 
tion, and perseverance, there are certain moral 
and ethical questions that affect the problem of 
life, and only as man considers them in their 
true relations can he hope to generate the high- 
est power. He knows that aside from all thought 



The Secret of Power 15 

of spiritual development, his mind is at peace 
only when he feels and acts justly toward others. 
He is endowed with a sense of justice, and only 
as he expresses it is his mind strengthened; for 
if he cultivates the habit of injustice inharmony 
enters his mind and thus weakens his mental 
capabilities. 

Coming now to the spiritual side of life, in 
order to get at the completeness of power, we 
first observe man's love-nature, of which we have 
had glimmerings from his very lowest estate. 
Again, little by little, as he deals justly with 
others, he develops the element of faith; and 
finally, as he begins to take a brighter view of 
things, hope comes into his life. So we discern 
in man three soul qualities. 

Our knowledge of earth-life is not eternal 
knowledge. It pertains to temporal things. 
Through its right application, however, we are 
enabled to develop the knowledge that is latent 
within each of us. This is not accumulated 
wisdom, but rather the potentialities of soul 
and mind. The enduring qualities of human 
life pertain to the soul. How shall we live the 
soul life? Let us consider personality as an in- 
strument. If that be perfect the force will act 
perfectly through it. We do not live so much 
as we are lived in and through. God lives in us 
and we live in God. There is no possibility of 



f 6 Dominion and Potver 

getting away from universal power, and the 
intelligence that has been given to each child of 
God can be employed to get and keep all the 
power that he needs or can possibly use. 

We need power on the spiritual plane; we 
need it on the intellectual plane; we need it on 
the physical plane. But when we enter the 
spiritual realm our old life-methods are entirely 
supplanted by the new. It is the spirit within 
us that contains the transforming power; the 
outer is but the instrument of the inner entity. 
Let us cease the useless effort to relate ourselves 
to the outer world — to people we think can aid 
us, or to things that we feel have benefited us — 
and let us seek that which shall bring the real 
abundance of life. Everything of value is within 
the realm of spirit, and we can get therefrom 
whatever we wish; but we must seek it in the 
true way. We must get mental and physical 
health in the right way — through the recogni- 
tion and development of our soul qualities. The 
man who fully realizes that he is living and 
moving in God can never express disease, be- 
cause he has passed from under the "law of sin 
and death," which law we ourselves have made, 
and has now come under the law of the spirit of 
life, which gives freedom from all negative con- 
ditions. 

We often consider ourselves great sufferers, 



The Secret of Power 17 

and mentally dwell upon the change called death. 
It makes no difference what we think about life ; 
life is eternal, and absolutely pure and healthful. 
It is filled with strength and goodness. " The 
eyes of the Lord are too pure to behold iniquity." 
But we must rise above the so-called law of sin 
and death and become a law unto our true selves. 
The law of God is written in the life of man, and 
we have the power to make ourselves what we 
will through a recognition of this law of the 
spirit of life. Nothing is accomplished in the ex- 
ternal. Even from the very beginning of things 
the vital force has been working from the center, 
evolving that which was latent in the soul at 
its inception. 

Everything becomes new when viewed from 
the center of life. This is not to form a mental 
concept of a personal God; it is simply to realize 
that God is within, and to look from the Godlike 
part of one's being outward. There can be no 
true or lasting expression of life till we recog- 
nize the highest within us. We may acquire all 
possible knowledge of the outer life and yet be 
deficient in wisdom, for wisdom and knowledge 
are not the same; but when they are combined 
the individual puts the knowledge he has to 
practical use. It is only through the right use 
of our knowledge that we become strong. When 
we utilize our possessions in the right way, 



1 8 Dominion and Power 

greater possessions are acquired; thus do we 
learn the true secret of power. Many people 
think that if they half starve themselves, or if 
they live on certain kinds of food, or if they do 
or abstain from doing certain other things, they 
will bring about conditions that will tend to de- 
velop spirituality. But if one is right within he 
will do everything right without; that is to say, 
a man that is pure in heart will be clean and 
whole in body. Mental activity produces physi- 
cal activity. 

Possibly two-thirds of the work of the world 
is done in the wrong way, because we think 
about it in the wrong way. One may sit down 
and say, " Now I am going to rest," and yet find 
no rest. One may lie down and have all sorts of 
thoughts running through his mind that will 
make him thoroughly tired in both mind and 
body. When we learn to do things in the right 
way we will not be tired because of their doing. 

The secret of power lies in going to the very 
heart of things — to the soul — and working from 
within outward, thus developing love and faith 
and hope, and in that way becoming " magnetic" 
by imparting these qualities to others. Think 
clearly. Get a clear mental conception of what 
you wish to accomplish and steadfastly adhere 
to it. Be temperate in all things, and everything 
necessary in the physical life will come to you — 



The Secret of Power 19 

because it is right that it should. The thought 
of" doing penance" is a perversion of the truth. 
But it may be necessary to separate one's self 
from others occasionally. Jesus did this at times ; 
he went into the wilderness or out on the sea, 
but he returned again to his work. 

The one who accomplishes the most in life 
will be the one who is unceasingly doing good 
to others; the one who becomes strong without 
taking thought of self — simply working because 
he loves to work, doing good because he loves 
to do good, always working from the highest 
impulse (which invariably comes from within) 
rather than from any impression from without. 
There is nothing strange or mysterious about 
this. The secret of power is open to all. Any 
one who chooses may become perfectly strong 
and well. Failure is due to our having estab- 
lished certain habits in the past that we find hard 
to relinquish. The old habits having brought 
us so little, why should we continue to hold them 
when the new course offers so much ? Why 
should we not claim for ourselves that which 
legitimately belongs to us ? It is by persevering 
— knowing that we can do, knowing that we can 
be — that we shall attain our desires. This is the 
secret of power — to go right to the heart of 
things and work outward to the circumference 
of life. 



20 Do7tiinion and Power 

''Thus we see that the realization of God 
which gives us power is not alone to realize His 
greatness, but to realize His greatness in us; not 
alone to believe He has done great things for 
other people, but to believe that He dwells in 
our own soul with equal power, so that there is 
nothing too high for us to ask of Him. Our 
kinship to Him is so close that His greatness is 
our greatness." 




THREE PLANES OF DEVELOPMENT 

" The glorious creature laughed out even in sleep ! 
But when full roused, each giant-limb awake, 
Each sinew strung, the great heart pulsing fast, 
He shall start up and stand on his own earth ; 
Then shall his long triumphant march begin; 
Thence shall his being date ; — thus wholly roused, 
What he achieves shall be set down to him. 
When all the race is perfected alike 
As man, that is ; all tended to mankind, 
And, man produced, all has its end thus far ; 
But in completed man begins anew 
A tendency to God." 

— Browning. 

While the law of evolution, as explained by its 
discoverers, tends to clear up and make plain 
many phases and conditions of things hitherto 
unexplamable, there are yet numberless things 
shrouded in mystery. I believe the time is near 
when the scientific world will perceive that the 
law of evolution is not sufficient in itself to ex- 
plain the why and wherefore of life in its varying 
conditions and forms, and that the so-called law 
of natural selection will have to be discarded 
and another substituted that will not work injury 
to the law of evolution, but explain it more fully: 
a law that will take into account a supreme In- 
telligence seeking manifestation through a mul- 

21 



22 Dominion and Power 

tiplicity of ideals; a law that will demonstrate 
that the ideal is always first and the expression 
of it last. The law of evolution deals with effects, 
at no point entering the realm of causation. The 
higher law of which evolution is but the outer 
expression will only be understood when we go 
to the fountain-head of things — when we seek 
knowledge of causes. 

Knowledge coming to us in this way will give 
the real key with which to unlock the secrets of 
the external world. The one who would know 
must begin with causes, and through them ex- 
plain effects : the law of involution first, the law 
of evolution last; the Immanent God, the In- 
dwelling Spirit, the Ideal seeking expression. 
When Jesus said, " God can raise up of these 
stones children unto Abraham," he did not mean 
a God external thereto, but an infinite and eter- 
nal Energy that pulsates even in the very stones. 
This is not a dead universe, but one that throbs 
with life from the very heart to the circumfer- 
ence. The universe lives and moves and has its 
being in God. 

Recognizing a spiritual basis for all things., we 
shall be able to trace through the law of evolu- 
tion a natural, orderly process, wherein the un- 
seen life and intelligence are ceaselessly at work 
constructing habitations suited to their needs; 
and as the ideal finds ever greater expression, the 



Three Planes of Development 23 

habitation becomes more complex and more 
wonderfully perfect. 

In the first place, let us consider the ideal man 
as a spiritual being, animated by the spirit of 
God, controlled and directed by a divine intel- 
ligence — the microcosm, the very image and 
likeness of God — in whose life is contained an 
infinity of possibilities reaching from the lowest 
earthly conditions to a realization of oneness 
with God; from conditions wherein sin, sorrow, 
and sickness weigh down and burden the life to 
that absolute sonship wherein the soul trium- 
phant has dominion and power over all things. 
We may not postulate the "birth" of the soul, 
but we can trace its history through its earthly 
pilgrimage. 

Although the spiritual man is first in reality, 
yet, when we come to deal with man from the 
phenomenal or the evolutionary point of view, 
we must necessarily begin with the physical or 
animal man — the animal that is more subtle than 
any beast of the field, because this physical man 
is in reality the summing up of the whole animal 
kingdom. He is also the epitome of all the in- 
telligence that controls and directs the animal 
life. 

Every characteristic found in any of the lower 
kingdoms can be found in man, so that when 
man looks out on the visible world about him 



24 Dominion and Power 

he is looking on a picture of what he is, or what 
he has been; there is absolutely nothing that 
has not its correspondence in his own conscious 
life. 

In the purely physical stage of development, 
man to a very great degree is governed by the 
same law that controls and directs the life of the 
animal. If he conforms to the law of this lower 
plane, he is comparatively well and happy. It 
is not as yet essential to his well-being that he 
have conceptions as to his relations to God and 
humanity. Moderation and temperance are, 
however, qualities necessary for his physical 
health. If whatever mind he has developed is 
comparatively free from the passions of anger, 
hatred, and strife — if the life is in a state of con- 
trol, so far as it has developed — it makes no dif- 
ference whether religious ideas have as yet found 
place in his mind. Obedience to this law of 
moderation in all things brings health and hap- 
piness as a natural result. The requirements for 
this plane of development being so few and simple, 
more people are found here well and strong than 
on the higher and more complex planes. From 
him to whom little is given, little is required. 

At this stage of life, instinct (it can hardly be 
called intuition) is the guiding factor rather than 
thought or reason. But even at this early period 
in man's life a higher consciousness is demand- 



Three Planes of Development 25 

ing recognition. There is something pressing 
from the center of his being that can not and will 
not be ignored. Dim though it may be at first, 
as time goes on it becomes more and more a 
controlling and directing force. Instinct gives 
way to thought and reason, and man enters the 
second plane in his evolution. A new world is 
opened to his vision, and the work of reconstruc- 
tion is begun. I would not be understood. as 
saying that any marked change takes place at 
any given moment, because in all probability the 
change is a gradual one. It may be like the 
bud that has been swelling for days, or even 
weeks, when, lo ! in the twinkling of an eye the 
blossom is unfolded. Doubtless there is a time 
when man first realizes the consciousness of a 
thinking, reasoning power as something distinct 
from and even superior to the sensuous animal 
life. He now finds himself between two planes of 
existence. The things that appeal to him from the 
purely physical side and the appeal that comes 
to him from his dawning intellectual powers cause 
a conflict that never ceases until the spiritual 
supremacy in life is attained. 

It is really at this stage that a distinct sense 
of what is termed good and evil enters man's 
consciousness. In the light of the new develop- 
ment, desires and habits acquired on the lower 
plane are looked upon as hindrances to intellec- 



26 Dominion and Power 

tual progress. The struggle between living a 
new life and dying to the old one has begun, 
because life on this phenomenal plane of exist- 
ence is one of constant change ; the things that 
we live and believe to-day pass away, and, be- 
hold ! on the morrow a new order — for men 
" mount on stepping-stones of their dead selves 
to higher things." Not that the old has been 
evil, but with the coming of the new there is a 
larger interpretation ; new ideals enter the mind, 
and failure to live up to these higher ideals con- 
stitutes sin, or lack of conformity to one's knowl- 
edge of law and order. Every new and larger 
ideal of life brings with it increased responsibili- 
ties, and the failure to meet these responsibilities 
brings about a state of mental unrest and dissat- 
isfaction which in turn finds expression in the 
physical organism — first producing weakness, 
then disease. 

We must regard man as a unit. The soul is 
not separate or distinct from mind, for mind is 
its offspring- — the something wherewith it be- 
comes related to the phenomenal universe, as 
the body is, in turn, related to mind. What the 
mind thinks the body becomes, and when the 
mind thinks its noblest and truest thoughts of 
life the body responds by giving external ex- 
pression to those thoughts. Mind is related to 
life in two ways ; we might say that it stands 



Three Planes of Development 27 

between the phenomenal universe on the one 
hand and the unseen world of causes on the 
other. In the first stages of its development it 
turns almost exclusively to the outer, believing 
that reality is to be found there, as well as every- 
thing needful to satisfy its life, having as yet 
little if any knowledge of the spiritual force or 
power that gave it existence. We now have 
what might be termed the carnal mind, or the 
mind not yet illumined by the indwelling spirit. 

There is a knowledge of the possession of 
mental faculties that can be so thoroughly culti- 
vated that man comes to believe that his intel- 
lect and reasoning faculties are the highest 
attributes of his being. It is at this period in 
his life that he formulates creeds and becomes 
dogmatic in his religion. The thought of "jus- 
tice " is a predominating one — but that justice is 
not always tempered with mercy. The most 
cruel things the world has ever known have not 
come from the man on the physical plane, but 
from the intellectually developed man, whose 
life was barren of love for humanity. Men who 
thought they were doing the will of God have 
perpetrated crimes, in the name of religious 
creeds, too fearful to contemplate. The intel- 
lectual plane of development is the great plane 
of unrest, of ceaseless activities. More mental 
an4 physical disturbances occur on this plane 



28 Dominion and Power 

than on either the physical or spiritual plane. 
On this plane man's desires become multiplied 
and the mind is never satisfied. Each gratified 
desire brings another want to take its place. 
The accumulation of knowledge does not bring 
contentment; in fact, it becomes rather a bur- 
den. Solomon sums it up as follows : u For in 
much wisdom is much grief; and he that in- 
creaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." 

There is, however, a light shining in the dark- 
ness of human unrest: a light to enlighten every 
man that cometh into the world — that light 
which is a spark of the divine Presence. From 
the very center of being the soul attributes of 
faith, hope, and love are pushing outward, de- 
manding recognition. These qualities can not 
be imagined in the mind ; yet, beautifying and 
uplifting, they lend tone and color to every 
thought-picture, until earthly things stand re- 
vealed in heavenly glory. This is the coming 
of the kingdom of God on earth — the transmu- 
tation of the self-will into the divine will, where 
man rean~es his at-one-ment with God. 

fr'xom the altitude of the spiritual plane, every- 
thing is seen in a new light; old things have 
passed away, and, behold! all things have be- 
come new. The law of. evolution has ceased to 
act, and the soul has become a law unto itself. 
The soul stands revealed as the image and like- 



Three Planes of Development 29 

ness of its Creator; not a physical image, not a 
mental conception, but a spiritual consciousness 
endowed with divine faculties that shape reason, 
control thought, and perfect the physical organ- 
ism. "For if the spirit of Him who raised up 
Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised 
up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your 
mortal bodies by the spirit which dwelleth in 
you." 

It is only from this plane that man perceives 
the unity of life; that he realizes that all life is 
one; and that he ceases to resist what is termed 
the "evil" of life and sets his face steadfastly 
toward the accomplishment of every undertak- 
ing through the power of good. He has risen 
above the turmoil and strife, so that while see- 
ing them he is not affected by them; not that 
the heart has lost sympathy for the sorrow and 
distress existing on the other planes, but that a 
new consciousness has come which discloses the 
fact that all things work together for good. Sin, 
sorrow, pain, and disease are only transitory 
conditions ; they are, after all, only experiences 
through which we learn the lessons of life and 
are brought more quickly to a knowledge of 
God and His love, which passes understanding 
and brings a realization that "the sufferings of 
this present time are not worthy to be compared 
with the glory which shall be revealed in us." 



THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 

11 It was not strange I saw no good in man, 
To overbalance all the wear and waste 
Of faculties, displayed in vain, but born 
To prosper in some better sphere: and why? 
In my own heart love had not been made wise 
To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind, 
To know even hate is but a mask of love's, 
To see a good in evil, and a hope 
In ill success." — Browning. 

"Nothing is foreign ; parts relate to whole; 
One all-extending, all-preserving Soul 
Connects each being, greatest with the least ; 
Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast ; 
All served, all serving ; nothing stands alone ; 
The chain holds on, and where it ends unknown. 
Has God, thou fool ! worked solely for thy good, 
Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?" 

— Pope. 

*' Light is positive and radiates. Darkness is negative and 
absorbes. One is powerful, the other powerless. 

" So with good and evil. 

"We underestimate the power of good. 

" We exaggerate the power of 'evil.' 

"Evil is the weakest thing in life. It is a mirage, a tem-r 
porary appearance only, and contrary to all the tides and cur- 
rents of the universe. 

" Good has all the forces of the Infinite behind it. 

" Its power is incalculable. It never fails." 

— Charles B. Newcomb. 

At the very outset of life man is confronted 
by the greatest of all mysteries : the problem of 

30 



The Tree of Knowledge 31 

good and evil. Within this problem is con- 
tained the solution of all the lesser questions of 
life that vex and perplex the mind. It is not 
only this problem that is the first thing to de- 
mand man's attention, but when he has solved 
it the world and the things of the world have 
lost their hold on him forever; for he has risen 
triumphant over sin and death; so that we might 
say that this solution is the Alpha and Omega of 
all the wisdom of the world. 

In the first stages of man's life begins the per- 
sonification of good and evil, and he has many 
gods. Whatever affects his life in a beneficial 
way becomes a god of good; whatever has 
harmful effects, becomes a god of evil. 

In his worship of the gods of good, the quali- 
ties corresponding to those he worships come 
into a living existence in his own nature. In 
the same way the attributes with which he 
endows his gods of evil, find expression in his 
own life. He is thus constantly between two 
forces : one making for good and the other for 
evil ; the one calling out love and reverence, the 
other, hate and fear. 

As he allows his mind to come under the 
sway of the one or the other, so his whole life is 
influenced and he becomes what his gods are. 
As his knowledge increases, the number of his 
gods decreases, until at last he has but two — a 



32 Dominion and Power 

god of good and a god of evil; but his state is no 
better than before. The many personalities of 
the past have resolved themselves into the attri- 
butes of these two gods. At the very heart of 
man's life is the divine ideal which is eternally 
steadfast, which knows naught of anything save 
good. To some degree he is conscious of this, 
and instinctively he places the evil of life outside 
himself, so, when he is guilty of any evil thing, 
he attributes it to the influence exerted over him 
by the god of evil. He shifts the weight of 
responsibility from his own shoulders, and the 
devil is made the scapegoat for his sins. When, 
however, he conforms to his higher ideals of 
good, he attributes this good to himself rather 
than to any external being. 

The reason for these two conditions might be 
summed up as follows: There being no evil 
at the heart of life, it follows that evil must 
be external to the life; therefore, the responsi- 
bility of evil-doing must be placed elsewhere. 
But the sense of good being an innate qual- 
ity of the life does not require any external 
being to account for it. Evil does not reach 
further back than the imaging faculty of the 
mind of man, and it comes from man's failure 
to comprehend the true relation of things in 
life; it comes from man's inability to grasp 
the unity of life; it comes from partial vision 



The Tree of Knotvledge ?>Z 

and undeveloped knowledge, wherein things 
are seen not as they are, but rather as they 
seem to be. There is a law of contradictions 
which governs the real knowledge that dis- 
tinguishes between the real and the unreal; a 
law which eventually makes clear that "all is of 
God that is or is to be, and God is good." 

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil 
shows us that the reality of good is only made 
evident to us through that which contradicts it 
— evil; that evil is not something in and of 
itself, but rather the dark background which 
brings out life's perfect picture; that it has only 
power as we believe in it and give it power; that 
it is the absence of light and of knowledge. 
Just as darkness is the absence of the light of 
the sun, so evil is the absence of the knowledge 
of the law of God, and exists, as darkness exists, 
not as a reality, but as an unreal something 
which shall pass away before the coming of the 
light of truth. 

No matter at what point on the surface of life 
we start, no matter how evil a thing may seem 
to be, in the final analysis of the underlying 
thought or motive we find nothing but good. 
Good may be diverted into wrong channels, and 
so fail in positive expression. When the ideal is 
not perfectly expressed, as the law demands it 
shall be, the perverted good becomes apparent 



34 Dominion and Power 

evil. Because of perfect law and order through- 
out the universe, any failure on the part of man 
to bring his life in accord with this law and 
order, violates his intuitive recognition of the 
harmony necessary to his well-being, and results 
in a discordant condition which is termed evil. 
Let us hold clearly in mind this thought : Every- 
thing is good. Let us consider the universe as a 
perfect whole composed of many parts, each part 
having its perfect office. When, however, a part 
is made to do duty for other than that for 
which it was intended, the law is violated and 
an element of friction and discord is engendered, 
which constitutes what is termed evil. Some- 
time it will be recognized that whatsoever man 
does which results in harmony and peace of 
mind, is in reality the fulfilling of the law. It 
makes no difference one way or the other what 
the conventionally minded think, harmony is, 
after all, the key-note of existence. 

In the life of man there is a constant process 
of development, each stage being perfect within 
its limitations, just as the unripened fruit is per- 
fect in so far as it has developed. To the more 
highly developed mind, when there is knowl- 
edge of law and order, looking back on the 
stages below and failing to find knowledge 
equal to its own, it conceives such conditions as 
being wicked or evil. 



The Tree of Knowledge 35 

Shakespeare uttered a great truth when he 
said there is nothing either good or bad, but 
thinking makes it so; and Paul a still greater 
one when he said he was persuaded that all 
things are good, but to him who thinketh a 
thing to be evil, to him it is evil. At every 
stage in the development of man, wherein there 
is lack of knowledge and conformity to law, 
such development is brought about through 
many and varied experiences, and these cause 
sorrow of mind and pain of body. If man can 
not see and choose the higher way, there re- 
mains no other way for his purification save 
through the fire which burns out the dross of 
life. While passing through the experiences 
needful to the working out of his salvation, and 
failing to see the good, he looks upon his tnals 
and sufferings as being evil. 

There are no mistakes in God's plan ; God did 
not make some people good and others evil, 
neither did He foreordain some to everlasting 
life and others to everlasting death. His perfect 
thought is wrapped up in every soul, and there 
is nothing that can nullify it. 

Man is not good or bad; knowledge and 
right use of mental faculties tend to make him 
harmonious. Lack of knowledge and conse- 
quent disobedience of law result in discord so 
that the chords of life are not harmoniously 



36 Dominion and Power 

played. But as with the musician, experience 
and practice make perfect. Whether a man is 
consciously and actively engaged in discovering 
and conforming to law and order, or whether 
his eyes are blinded to the light, the force of life 
pressing outward from the center, brings with it 
unfoldment of innate qualities. Where con- 
sciousness of the truth of this exists the real 
joy of life comes through the knowing and ths 
doing. 

In our study of good and evil, we must ap- 
proach it from still another standpoint; that is, 
that every inner ideal is seeking outward ex- 
pression, and in this effort there is the resistance 
which one form of life offers to another. In the 
great economy of life up to a certain stage in the 
development of man resistance seems to be a 
necessary qualification to growth. When the re- 
sistance becomes too great, growth is thwarted; 
when there is little resistance there is compar- 
atively little mental or physical development. 
An illustration of this may be found among the 
people who live in the frigid zone where the 
outer resistance is so great it becomes a struggle 
to maintain physical existence, and the sensibil- 
ities of the people are blunted, while in the tor- 
rid zone, where physical existence is so easily 
maintained, there is a consequent sluggishness 
of mind and body. Only in the temperate zones 



The Tree of Knowledge 37 

do we find the more perfect development which 
comes from resistance being neither too great 
nor too little, showing us that between extremes 
man finds his point of balance. The balance on 
one plane differs from the balance on another. 

The resistance and competition on a lower 
plane, when transferred to a higher plane, would 
no longer prove beneficial ; so the law of resist- 
ance, as understood by the physically and intel- 
lectually developed, would make way for the 
law of non-resistance, when man unfolds to a 
knowledge of his true relationship to God and 
man. One might ask, Does the law of God 
change? No: the law is eternal and unchang- 
ing, but man's perception of it changes. At one 
stage of life we are only able to perceive the 
most external manifestation of law, so that it 
seems to be physical in its inception and action. 
At another stage, thought and reason reach a 
still higher conclusion. Law here has its begin- 
ning in mind and its manifestation in the mate- 
rial ; but in both cases there is failure to recog- 
nize the perfect law, for sin, sickness, and death 
continue to be real conditions rather than condi- 
tions which have an existence that passes away 
with the coming of the fuller knowledge of the 
law of the spirit of life. 

In reality there is neither sin, sickness, nor 
death. God's law can neither be broken nor set 



38 Dominion and Power 

aside, and when man knows this of a very truth 
then will come the real freedom of life. The 
belief in the personal self is one of the causes of 
much of the seeming evil of the world. The 
thought of personality separates man from God 
and from his fellow-man, and personal existence 
and well-being become the leading motives of 
life. This condition generates selfishness and 
the many evils which flow from it. If we could 
know that there is no separation from God or 
man in all the great universe, that God is in all, 
that life is in all, that man is one with the Source 
of his being, that men are as closely related to 
one another as they are to God, that we are 
nothing apart from God, that one's neighbor is 
himself, the thought of personality would fade 
from our minds forever. 

To the pure in heart all things become pure. 
When man looks with God's eyes on the world 
about him, he will pronounce all things good, 
he will know that from first to last all things 
have been working together for his perfect de- 
velopment, and that God's law when fully under- 
stood, is the law of love. Having thus risen to 
a knowledge of the true law, the real inheritance 
of life is made known : that we are sons of God 
and joint heirs with Christ, that we have passed 
from death unto life. 



The Tree of Knowledge 39 

MEDITATION 

Our Heavenly Father, Thou art the source of 
all health. There is no knowledge or under- 
standing apart from Thee. Thy truth and 
wisdom art from everlasting to everlasting. It 
is Thy truth, which, entering into the mind of 
man, makes him strong in the power of Thy 
might; makes him wise in the strength of Thy 
wisdom. We realize that the desire of our 
hearts and minds to know more of Thy truth 
will relate us to, and make us one with it, 
and that Thy wisdom illuminating our minds 
shall throw light on the way that leads to life 
eternal, bringing us into the fulness, into the 
perfect freedom, of life and truth. May our 
every thought be inspired with Thy truth, that 
each word and deed, as it takes form in the 
world in which we live, shall perfectly express 
divine truth. We know when we are in the 
truth that our lives are in harmony with law; 
that our minds are continually renewed, and our 
bodies strengthened; that as we dwell in truth, 
truth lives in us. The joy and the peace of life 
are realized as never before. 

Lead us in the way of all truth. Guide us in 
the way of all righteousness. Give to us an un- 
derstanding of Thy perfect law, and strength and 
wisdom to bring our lives into perfect con- 



40 Dominion and Power 

formity and trust to it. Then shall the seeming 
end of life pass away, and the shadows of doubt 
and unrest shall no longer disturb us. Then 
shall we rejoice and be glad, for Thy truth and 
wisdom shall lead us into paths of pleasant- 
ness and ways of peace. And we shall have 
become free men and women in the Christ, and 
Thy name shall have all the honor and all the 
glory, and Thy truth shall abide with us and be 
with us evermore. Amen. 




THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 

" Unseen, yet not unfelt ; if any thought 

Has raised our minds from earth, a pure desire, 
A generous act, a noble purpose brought, 

It is Thy breath, O Lord, which fans the fire." 
— James Freeman Clarke. 

"Mind, which is the creative force in the universe, is, 
therefore, the creative force in man. The cosmos, which is, in 
its inner essence, thought evolved, has its earthly consumma- 
tion in man, who is also, in his inner essence and substance, 
thought. Man is part of the universe, though the highest 
part. The thought that evolves it evolves him. He is that 
force manifested in its highest form. All human forces are, 
therefore, as are all cosmic forces, in the last analysis, forms 
of thought. Man himself is a body woven around a soul- 
mind materializing itself. Each man is a distinct thought of 
God, carrying in him the divine potencies of the divine 
thought. As George MacDonald sings, in his exquisite little 
poem, in which the baby interprets the mystery of his own 
being : ' God thought of me, and so I grew.' 

"All that man does upon the earth is done in and through 
the power of his thinking. Every deed is a projected 
thought. All his creative work is the manifestation of the 
one creative force — thought." 

— The Rev. R. Heber Newton, D. D. 

In the shorter catechism of the Westmin- 
ster confession of faith, the question is asked : 
"What is the chief end of man?" The answer 
given : " The chief end of man is to glorify God 
and to enjoy Him forever." How glorify and 



4* Dominion and Power 

enjoy God, if man in his searchings has not 
found Him? — how glorify and enjoy when no 
man hath seen God ? Although there are many 
statements in this shorter catechism which an- 
tagonize both reason and feeling, the one con- 
cerning man's chief end is well worthy thought- 
ful consideration. 

There must be some great purpose in the life 
of man. Is it possible for us to discover this 
purpose and to realize the real aim of life? 
Great souls who have lived on this earth have 
declared in no uncertain terms that the way of 
eternal life could be found by those seeking 
diligently. They not only declared this, but by 
precept and example have sought to point out 
the way. The greatest teachers have not de- 
pended upon visible things to show the way of 
life, but rather on the invisible. It was through 
thought and feeling, not through word and deed, 
that the fulness of life was to come. Man was not 
to take any external thing and bow down before 
it, because God is spirit and must be worshiped 
in spirit and in truth. The way that leads to 
God, then, is through man's spiritual conscious- 
ness, not through the things that appeal to his 
purely sensuous nature. God's kingdom is the 
universe, and God's kingdom is also in the soul 
of man. He who would know God must seek 
Him in the temple of his own soul, and he who 



The Purpose of Life 43 

finds him, realizes the life eternal. Truly the 
kingdom of God — the way, the truth, and the 
life — lies within. No man may feel God's love, 
comprehend His wisdom, or give expression to 
His power save as he realizes his oneness with 
the Source of love and wisdom and power. 

As man leaves the outer world of form and 
enters the inner realm of thought and feeling, 
possibilities apparently limitless open to his new 
vision. He begins to realize that the omnipo- 
tent, omniscient, and omnipresent God is work- 
ing in his life to will and to do. 

Little by little, the earth and the things of the 
earth are put under foot, and the bondage of 
fear that has held man in subjection to the 
material, passes away, and he becomes con- 
scious not only of the mastery of his own life, 
but of all things below him in the scale of 
creation. 

It is in this way that man works out his own 
salvation through rightful use of his God-given 
powers. Self-control, or the power to use every 
faculty of mind and every attribute of soul, is the 
real purpose of life, because in doing this, man 
manifests God on earth, and His will finds its 
perfect expression both in the inner and outer 
life. It must, therefore, be apparent to all that 
the real mastery begins in man's own life, and 
to the degree he succeeds in gaining perfect self- 



44 Dominion and Power 

control, to the same extent has he dominion and 
power over the things of the external world. 

There are some who reason that man's objec- 
tive life has made him what he is subjectively, 
but as the object can never become the subject 
man is not debtor to the external world for any- 
inner condition. That outer things play a part 
in calling out innate qualities is quite possible; 
but that the outer is responsible for the inner 
conditions is in no way true. While the very 
highest attributes of man's being are first in 
reality, yet in the evolutionary process of devel- 
opment they appear to be last, and those who 
fail to recognize the law of involution, are of a 
necessity obliged to regard man's subjective de- 
velopment as being purely a result of his objec- 
tive experience. 

Faith, hope, and love, the attributes of the 
soul, have their source in God, and the true self- 
control finds its inception in these highest at- 
tributes. He who seeks to bring these soul- 
qualities into an active existence in his life will 
find it the most direct way to acquire perfect 
control of thought and action ; because in work- 
ing from the center outward, the way of life is a 
strait and narrow one. Meditation, desire to 
know God's will, bring the outer life into closer 
touch with the inner forces. As the mind be- 
comes restful and is at peace it mirrors and 



The Purpose of Life 45 

reflects the universal will. This inner realiza- 
tion of oneness is in turn reflected to the mind 
from the outer world, producing both unity and 
harmony of thought. When the mind realizes 
both the inner and outer unity of life and expres- 
sion, all sense of fear is lost, the whole attitude 
of man becomes changed, the thought of one- 
ness enters into everything, duty to God and to 
man becomes plain, every thought-picture is a 
true one, every act finds perfect expression, 
power is never wrongly used, every faculty of 
mind responds to the soul-impulse and the body 
is strengthened, quickened, and renewed. 

In centering the mind on the positive good, 
all negative or evil thought disappears, the king- 
dom of God is attained, the real purpose of life 
is disclosed in that man now glorifies God by 
showing forth His perfect image and likeness. 
Knowing that all is of God that is, it has become 
possible for him to "glorify God and enjoy Him 
forever," 

MEDITATION 

Our Father, Thou in whom I live and move 
and have my being, Thou the Loving Giver of 
every good and perfect gift, I ask that Thy love 
and wisdom may so illumine and direct my way 
that Thy invisible kingdom may find expression 
through my every thought, word, and deed. 



46 Dominion and Power 

Help me to realize that Thy kingdom is within 
mine own soul, yet not alone within my soul but 
in all souls Thou hast brought into existence; 
that Thy life, Thy love, and Thy intelligence 
unite me in closest bonds of brotherhood with 
all Thy children, that there is no separation be- 
tween their life and my life, but that we are all 
one in Thee. 




THE MISTAKES IN LIFE 

• 4 And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence 
For the fulness of the days ? Have we withered or agonized? 
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might 

issue thence ? 
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be 

prized ? 
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, 
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe." 

— Browning. 

The mistakes in life are not made by the soul 
of man, but by the mind ; neither do mistakes 
affect the soul. They do, however, affect the 
whole mental and physical life of man. 

Viewed from the larger standpoint there are 
no mistakes. Every experience that comes to 
us brings us a lesson whereby we may profit. 
The prodigal son was working out his salvation 
when he took the course he did just as surely as 
did the elder brother who never left the father's 
home, and we have every reason to believe that 
the prodigal came to a realization of the Father's 
loving-kindness before his brother. All things 
work together for good whether we call them by 
the name of good or evil. Doubtless the suffer- 
ing caused by the course pursued by the prodi- 
gal son was far greater than that endured by the 

47 



48 Dominion and Power 

elder brother. It needs be that offenses must 
come, no matter if they do bring suffering in 
their train. It is the sorrow and suffering in life 
that purify and perfect the character. It fol- 
lows that if man has the power to make a mis- 
take he has also the power to correct it; that 
there is no mistake that can be made in life but 
what can be corrected. 

He who teaches otherwise teaches not in ac- 
cord with the divine law. It is never right to do 
evil that good may come, but out of every so- 
called evil, must come good. The friction and 
discord in life are on the surface, but back of the 
surface are the eternal verities; the surface action 
is only an indication of growth and change tak- 
ing place continually. Every mistake made may 
become a round in the ladder of progress, where- 
by we put the mistake under foot, and through 
it and by it, rise to a higher condition. There 
is no thought of failure in the divine plan, and 
everything is working together for the accom- 
plishment of one great end, that end the coming 
of God's kingdom in the outer and visible world, 
where perfect peace and harmony will replace 
the discord and unrest. 

The mind of man is the great battle-ground of 
life; the real enemies, if that they can be called, 
are found here. The one thing to subject and 
bring into perfect control is one's own mind; in 






The Mistakes in Life 49 

doing this we attain the real mastery of life. The 
thoughts we think give form to our words and 
deeds, and we become workers with God when 
we try to express perfect harmony in our own 
lives. Every thought-picture of life should have 
God in it, not as a personality, but as a living 
principle in the life, making each thought strong 
and vital. When there are purity, beauty, and 
harmony in one's thoughts, then God is in them, 
and God will find expression in our lives ; that 
is, we will become Godlike, we will be gaining 
the real control. Everything we do partakes of 
the quality of our thought; if the thought is a 
perfect one, then the work also becomes perfect; 
but a perfect work can never come from imper- 
fect thoughts. 

The great wonder of a perfect thought is this: 
that it is a reflection of God's love and wisdom, 
and when uttered it becomes God's spoken 
word. It was because they held their minds 
still until a perfect thought could enter that the 
prophets of old, when the word of the Lord 
came to them, spoke as those having au- 
thority. That thought they knew to be God's 
thought, and it could be given to the world 
as such. 

This is what we call inspiration, and when one 
speaks, inspired of the spirit, he speaks not of 
himself, for the Father working within him is 



$o Dominion and Power 

responsible for the word. " Open your mouths 
and I will fill them." 

When we feel the assurance of truth in our 
thoughts we should try to make them effective 
by keeping the mind centered on them; that 
is, every thought that conveys to our mind an 
element of strength or beauty, should be cherished 
as a part of our real inheritance. It would be 
found that in doing this each true thought would 
banish a false thought and by-and-by there 
would be no room in mind for other than true 
thoughts. We would have formed a habit that 
would make it far easier for us to think such 
thoughts than otherwise. We would overcome 
all the mistakes that we had been making and it 
would no longer be possible to make new ones. 
In this way life would become a source of pleas- 
ure and happiness, for there is a wonderful joy 
in the present life when development is taking 
place, and we are conscious of it. It is a mistake 
to defer this joy to a future time when we may 
have it now. 



FINDING ONE'S SELF 

"From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart ; 
For wit's false mirror held up nature's light ; 
Show'd erring pride, whatever is, is right; 
That reason, passion^ answer one great aim ; 
That true self-love and social are the same ; 
That virtue only makes our bliss below ; 
And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know." 

— Pope. 

" It is indeed true that he who loses his life, — that is, gives 
of his love, — shall save his life or happiness. Man may gain 
the whole world, including fame and wealth, but if he saves 
his life or love, and does not give it forth to humanity, he 
forfeits happiness. Long has he labored under the delusion 
that worldly power and material things can afford satisfaction ; 
but this false idea is slowly fading from his mind, for these 
possessions, when once acquired, are to him like the toys of 
which a child soon tires. They do not fill the soul with that 
glorious feeling of peace, joy, and life which only the presence 
of gentleness, kindness, and love in the spirit can give. Man 
is coming to understand that only through the appreciation 
and exercise of Godlike love can he enjoy endless happiness." 

— Hattie C. Flower. 

"There is no more important injunction in all the world, 
nor one with a deeper interior meaning, than, ' To thine own 
self be true.' In other words, be true to your own soul, for 
it is through your own soul that the voice of God speaks to 
you. This is the interior guide. This is the light that light- 
eth every man that cometh into the world. This is con- 
science. This is the voice of the higher self, the voice of the 
soul, the voice of God. * Thou shalt hear a voice behind 
thee, saying : This is the way, walk ye in it.'" 

—Ralph Waldo Trine. 

61 



52 Dominion and Power 

Humanity is one. Yet the one is composed 
of many parts, and when the parts are harmoni- 
ously related the whole is strengthened. In the 
bringing out of this harmonious relationship 
each individual has some part to act, and as he 
acts that part and does it well he benefits the 
grand organism ; and because of his relationship 
to that organism he renews his own life. It may 
be thought that this view of life will tend to de- 
stroy individuality; that each person's life will 
be swallowed up in the one. But the real 
thought is, that while each person retains his full 
individuality, occupying a place that no other 
person can fill, each one expressing the fulness 
of his own individual life, yet he works unitedly 
and in harmony with all other individuals. In 
one sense we are all sons of God ; that is, each 
individual is the microcosm of all that is con- 
tained in God — the macrocosm. 

But in the larger sense there is only one Son 
of God — the great body of humanity. All 
mankind has ever lived, or ever will live, in the 
great and only begotten Son of God — the 
Word — the Logos; the Word which must take 
on flesh, and express God in the visible world. 
We can understand, then, why the New Testa- 
ment refers to the " only begotten Son of God," 
and repeatedly to "Sons of God." 

Jesus was the first fruits of many brethren, a 



Finding One's Self 53 

corner-stone in the temple, of which every soul 
that has been, or will be, born into the world is a 
part. Every stone in the temple is a living 
stone, and has much to do in finding its true 
place. And the temple is builded by each 
soul recognizing its relationship to all other 
souls and working in union or harmony with 
them. The office of each soul is to effect 
this union and thereby work out its own 
salvation. 

In soul development there is no competition, 
but there must be co-operation. Any one who 
seeks development for himself, regardless of 
others, bars his own progress and stands in the 
light of others. Each part of the grand body 
must work for all parts. The eyes must see, the 
ears must hear, the hands must work for the 
whole body; then the whole body works for 
each part. Co-operation must be recognized as 
necessary, then, to the growth and development 
of mankind. Nevertheless, co-operation must 
be carried out in a thoroughly intelligent way — 
not by blind action wherein we fail to be a bene- 
fit to ourselves or others, but rather through a 
knowledge of our own needs and those of others. 
No matter upon what plane of development we 
are, we can always be helpful to some one in the 
world, and we can always be helped by some 
one, and only as this condition exists can we be 



54 Dominion and Power 

said to be thoroughly related to the grand body 
of humanity. 

When one is developed to a large degree, his 
circle in life becomes greatly enlarged, and. 
having passed through what thousands of 
others have passed through, he is better able to 
help others, for he knows of the pitfalls along 
the way; he knows when a helping hand is 
necessary, and if he hesitates or refuses aid he 
interferes with his own continued development. 
Such an one, having passed through many temp- 
tations, can sympathize with the tempted and 
fallen, can understand their trials and struggles, 
can enter into their lives without any feeling of 
self-righteousness. He can appeal to the high- 
est and best within them ; he becomes an instru- 
ment of God and strengthens and sustains 
those who are in need of help. Because of 
his doing this he brings himself into inti- 
mate relations with other souls, who have 
progressed further than he. Their love, their 
knowledge of life, flows out to him, and be- 
cause of his much giving there has been a 
beautiful receiving; blessing other lives he 
himself is blessed, and the temple has a new 
stone added to it and is nearer its perfect 
completion. 

It is not of so much importance to think of 
losing one's soul as to think of finding it; and it 



Finding One's Self 55 

is not so important to look to the future to find 
the soul, but to find it now. 

Feel the great "I am" in your soul. Know 
that God is there. Feel within the peace of God 
that passeth understanding. 

The only real object of life is to find the soul 
— to cultivate its powers by faith, hope, love. 

Only those things that we can take away with 
us are of great importance; and only knowledge 
gained by soul exercise can we take with us — 
keep with us always. 

There is but one Soul in the entire universe: 
the Father-Mother God. All souls are like and 
all souls are one with this Soul. 

The realities of life are within the soul. Mind, 
as it develops normally, expresses harmoniously 
ever-increasing realities, or realization, of the 
truth — a fuller comprehension of God's will and 
purpose. 

Verily, if a man would find his life he must 
lose it. In this way the real relationship of 
good life is accomplished. There is no other 
way wherein a man can love his neighbor as 
himself. There is no other way, because God's 
way is the only way. 



HOW TO CONSERVE FORCE 

" The mind's the measure of the man." 

—Watts. 

" My strength is as the strength of ten, 
Because my heart is pure." 

— Tennyson. 

"It is a truth that we can get more and more force by 
simply asking for it: and it is in the possibilities of human 
spirit to get so much, that through it the material world can 
be wholly subdued and ruled. Then misfortunes are impos- 
sible. For if they do come, you have always the power to 
build up again. 

"When, through prayer or demand, you have gained 
force, then ask for wisdom to direct it. You can direct your 
own force to injure or benefit yourself." 

— Prentice Mulford. 

How to conserve force is one of the greatest 
problems presented to the scientific world to- 
day. Of the force used in generating the electric 
light ninety-five per cent, is lost. How to get 
control and use this lost force, or at least a part 
of it, keeps the minds of many inventors busy. 
In the physical world, then, there is this great 
problem; but there is a still greater one in the 
mental realm, which, when thoroughly solved, 
will bring with it the solution of the other. It 
is that when man learns to conserve and use the 

59 



How to Conserve Force 57 

full force of his own life, he will have the key 
wherewith to unlock the door that leads him 
into the mysteries of the outer world. What- 
ever man has accomplished in the past in the 
way of invention or the utilization of force has 
been done because of his own development, and 
with greater development he will express a 
higher order of things in the world about him. 
When he has found the kingdom of God 
within his own conscious life the outer world 
will become a beautiful kingdom of heaven, 
"wherein the desert shall blossom as the rose 
and all the waste places shall be made glad." 

What is in ourselves of good or evil attracts 
its like to itself; and thought is the force within 
us that acts upon ourselves and others. So the 
wisdom is very evident of our thinking right 
thoughts — good, true, strong thoughts. By will 
and concentration of thought we can attract to 
us what we desire and become what we desire. 

Though we may not perceive it at once, every 
thought will have its expression through and 
upon us and others. So we can make ourselves 
what we wish to make ourselves, and relate our- 
selves to others as we choose. 

What will we do with this power within our- 
selves? Will we use it for good or for ill ? Life 
is too sacred, too involved, for us to be unmind- 
ful of how we use it. 



58 Dominion and Power 

We should be glad to live, glad to learn life's 
lessons; for by this knowledge and use of life 
the soul evolves to higher and higher planes of 
existence, each of which is necessary for the 
normal development of the soul. 

Each atom of us lives and can not be de- 
stroyed. Atoms change, but do not die; disin- 
tegrate, separate, but ever live. The thought- 
force in man controls these atoms and their 
vibrations. 

We put force, vital force, into all our actions 
as we put force into a watch when we wind it; 
and until that force is expended or dissipated in 
other directions, it acts in the form given it. 

The great starting-point is the conservation 
of force in each individual's life. Before taking 
up that side of the question, it might be well to 
show how we lose force and how needless, to a 
marked degree, is the loss. 

Mind is responsible for this unnecessary waste 
and not body, because the body is the mech- 
anism, the engine, and the mind the engineer. 
Force is everywhere, both within and without, 
but intelligence is needful to direct it aright. If 
the engineer is thoughtless, then the force 
needed to run the physical organism will be 
scattered, dissipated, and the machine can not 
work to its full capacity. "Thoughtless," in 
this sense, means the lack of true constructive 



How to Conserve Force 59 

thought, a state of mind wherein wrong pictures 
of life are formed, one in which the real propor- 
tions of life are lost sight of; and a distorted, 
perverted imagination shuts out or obscures the 
truer or higher thought of life. 

To a greater or less degree we find this con- 
dition existing in the minds of all people. The 
gratification of the self at the expense of the 
many — the desires of self for self — brings with 
it so many and such conflicting emotions that 
force, instead of having one main channel 
through which to move, becomes diverted in a 
hundred different ways, and the strength of life 
is lost. 

When we think of self for self, mind is filled 
with anxiety as to how we can best maintain 
and perpetuate our own personal ends. We 
know that the anxious thought only adds to 
the burden, but it is a legacy that comes to us 
through selfishness. Were it not for that we 
would not be anxious. We may say that we are 
anxious about others, and therefore we are not 
selfish. Who are the others we are anxious 
about? Those who come into our lives and 
whom we look upon as being in some way need- 
ful to our welfare. Our anxiety is limited to our 
own circle of people. Once in a while when our 
soul-nature is aroused by a great disaster, or dis- 
tress of the many, a desire to help, to aid, impels 



60 Dominion and Power 

us; it is not filled with anxiety, but with true 
sympathy and helpfulness. Who is ever made 
better in this world by worry or anxiety? Has 
one ever profited in any way by anxious thought? 
When anxious thought enters the mind, faith 
and trust go out, and every fibre of man's being, 
mental and physical, is weakened. 

The devil of self is the father of anxious 
thought, and when self becomes subordinate to 
the universal self, then the mind is freed from 
the bonds of worry. Self is the old father of 
lies, who was a liar from the beginning. Every- 
thing that tends to disrupt in life, all the envy 
and malice, all the hate and jealousy, all the 
pride and sham, everything that is ignoble and 
degrading, have their source in the perverted self 
— the self that separates itself from God and 
man; the self that is sufficient unto itself. We 
need not search for a greater devil as a pack- 
horse upon which to unload our sins; there is 
none greater. It is the carnal mind which has 
arrayed itself in opposition to God, denying His 
presence, His knowledge, and His power. It is 
the beginning and the end of all evil. Its aboli- 
tion will come only when the same realization 
enters the mind that came to Jesus the Christ: 
" Of myself I can do nothing; the Father dwell- 
ing within me, He doeth the work." 

Let us understand once and for all that any 



How to Conserve Force 61 

sense of separateness from God and our fellow- 
man tends in every way to weaken us, by 
bringing about a dissipation of force. The mind 
which dwells serenely in a knowledge of God's 
wisdom and power, God's love and goodness, 
opens the gateway for the influx of greater love 
and power — and the one who has been lost is 
found, and that which has been dead is alive 
again and shall live forever. The way to power, 
then, is through the recognition of God's pres- 
ence in the soul and the right use of power is 
the realization of the mind of God directing and 
controlling the life. We make ourselves recep- 
tive by bringing the mind into a state of peace 
and rest; God's will then becomes mirrored in 
our minds. In the carrying out of that will 
there is no scattering, no dissipation, of force, 
but it all makes for some fruitful end. The 
inner beauty becomes outer beauty. The inner 
strength is expressed in deeds outwardly worthy 
of itself. The whole life blends harmoniously 
with all life. It becomes attuned and gives forth 
a perfect sound of being. 

Let us come to a summing up of the whole 
matter: how to get force and how to use it. 
We get force first of all through desire to 
know God, to know Him in our own lives, living 
and loving in them; through becoming ani- 
mated by faith and hope, feeling these attributes 



62 Dominion and Power 

and knowing them to be the most vital part — 
the real part — of our being; through living in 
God's omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipres- 
ence; working with God and working for God, 
and living in joy and gladness because of the 
presence of God. This is the one and the only 
way of getting power, for all power, wisdom, 
intelligence are God. All energy is God, 
though when perverted in its use by man it is 
called evil, because it is seemingly so in its 
effects. But a perverted use of God's energy 
eventually works to the destruction of false mo- 
tives until it finds a Godlike expression. 

The retaining and conserving of power is 
effected by the desire on our part to express out- 
wardly all that we feel inwardly; to begin first 
with our fellow-man and allow the inner love and 
hope and faith to flow out from us to him, to 
bless and make glad his life. Mind takes an 
active part at this point and pictures all that is 
truest and best in others and for others. The 
mind becomes steadfast and unwavering, the 
goodness within it is reflected everywhere with- 
out; the thoughts it thinks are creative; they 
build up the good external deeds in the outer; 
they strengthen and sustain the weak; they feed 
the hungry and give sight to the blind. The 
full force of life flows from the center of being, 
uninterruptedly, relating the life outwardly to all 



Hoiv to Conserve Force 63 

creation, because it is harmoniously related to 
the all-creative power. 

The real white magic is this unselfish thinking 
and giving; it is this condition of mind which 
works all the so-called miracles, which makes 
for the good of others. The mind being at one 
with God has knowledge of His law, and through 
such knowledge every high thought becomes 
manifest in a noble deed. The getting and con- 
serving of power is one thing, because only as 
we use our God-given power does the still greater 
power come to us. Never seek for power to 
gratify any selfish end. Never seek for power 
for the sake of power; seek it in order that you 
may make others more loving, more hopeful, 
more faithful. And in losing thought of your- 
self, you will find the "pearl of great price." In 
giving your all, the all comes back. 

MEDITATION 

Our Father, we know that it is a reasonable 
service that we present our bodies whole and 
acceptable unto Thee, but we also know that this 
can not be done, save through the renewing of 
our minds, and that our minds are renewed by 
Thy spirit dwelling in us. In the spirit of faith 
we pray Thee that Thy spirit may find an abid- 
ing-place in our lives, illuminating our minds, 
and strengthening and making whole our bodies. 



64 Dominion and Power 

We would make our bodies a fit habitation for 
the soul, so that Thy will may find its perfect 
expression in both mind and body. 

Awaken our consciousness to the fact that 
Thou hast committed into our care, faculties of 
mind, through which divine love and wisdom 
may act for the up-building of the habitations in 
which we live, and that only as we use Thy power 
aright, can perfect health and happiness be ours. 
Cause us to see that only as we have health and 
happiness, are we in accord with Thy divine law. 
We pray for a more perfect understanding of 
Thy law, and a greater desire to do Thy will. 
Free us from all selfishness that would ask for 
ourselves things that we would not as gladly see 
others receive. Make our wills one with Thy 
will and our desires one with Thy desires for us, 
so that we may ask nothing amiss of Thee, and 
with hearts filled with love, and minds filled with 
thankfulness, we would bless and praise Thy 
Holy Name. 



FAITH IN CHARACTER-BUILDING 

" Peace be with you! The words that you have treasured, 
I echo back to you, O love, to-day! 
Words telling of a faith divine, unmeasured, 
In Him who said, ' I am with you alway."' 

— Lilian Whiting. 

"The faith-touched spirit beholds the past, present and 
future in one act. The infinite is centered in every point of 
space, time and spirit. Art thou great or small, within or 
without, sense, mind, or motion? Thou art all in all, O God! 
I am but a point in Thee. I share in Thy immortality. I 
will live, and not die. 

******* 

44 Will faith ever remain unscientific, will science ever re- 
main uninspired? Faith cures disease, causes energy, clears 
the understanding, conquers men, gives the losing cause its 
final triumph. Faith as a law of scientific investigation has 
not been cultivated, and science as a method of divine inspira- 
tion has not been pursued. Will no one teach us the law of 
the wisdom of true spirituality ? " — Mozoomdar. 

44 Who shall estimate the value of that character we have? 
To be a friend to one's self is to be in harmony with the spirit of 
Truth and to perceive an infinite friendliness ; but be your own 
enemy and where shall you find any friend ? We stand or fall 
by ourselves. In the emergency only that measure of inner 
force we possess shall avail ; then it is that every outward 
support would seem to slip away and we are left alone, — so 
much reliance, such a degree of faith, so great a realization 
of the good that lies in everything, with which to confront the 
spectre that has appeared. Our true thoughts our good angels 
are and shall come forth majestically and sustain us." 

—Stanton K. Davis. 

60 



66 Dominion and Power 

What we are is the result of what we have 
thought. In the process of evolution thinking 
may have covered a vast period of time, never- 
theless thought shapes the protoplasm as well 
as every other form in the ascent of life until in 
the fulness of time the body of man becomes 
the outward expression of that which he has 
thought himself to be. Mind, intelligence, 
thought, are in all things, even from the least to 
the greatest; thought in itself is only the instru- 
ment which shapes all form ; the real substance 
of life is faith. Take away the element of faith 
and thought ceases to be creative. To the de- 
gree that faith enters into the life, man becomes 
a creator. In thoroughly intelligent character- 
building we must consider the relative value of 
everything entering into the plan of life in order 
to get perfect results. 

Faith may be said to be the foundation-prin- 
ciple in the life of man ; through it we become 
consciously related to God. From faith were 
the mountains made and by faith shall the moun- 
tains be removed. There are no obstacles in life 
which are not leveled by the power of faith. 
Faith is the real substance of life and love is the 
only law to which faith must conform. We lay 
an eternal foundation when we accept love as 
the law and faith, as the substance, of all things. 
There is no law, there is no substance, apart 



Faith in Character- Building 67 

from love and faith. The recognition of this 
makes man one with God, giving him dominion 
and power over all things. 

Many have thought faith a state created by 
the mind, something we could add to or take 
from, but the mind is not its author. The mind 
may throw wide the door and invite faith to 
enter and flood the outer life. When this takes 
place man can accomplish in the outer world 
whatever he wills to do. A New Testament 
writer tells us of the wonderful works done by 
the great or holy men of Israel, through faith. 
When we realize its importance and absolute 
necessity to our well-being, we should desire it 
fervently and seek it diligently. The influx of 
faith is dependent very greatly on its use ; only 
as we use it in accordance with its law does the 
supply equal the demand. The real development 
of character comes through the mind's use of 
faith, and through its influence the mind becomes 
positive, and is no longer lost in a sea of doubt. 

Thought is like the Galatea of Pygmalion, 
while faith is the principle which animates and 
gives life. Bring the animating principle into 
everything you think and everything you do, and 
your every work will become instinct with life. 
The great pictures, the great music, the great 
sculptures, the great poetry, and everything that 
has been great in this world, has been great only 



68 Dominion and Power 

because of the faith put into the work. Every- 
thing which endures, endures because of faith. 
Let us desire, let us pray, that in all things we 
may have faith. Doubt saps the very force of 
life, and in a spirit of doubt we can accomplish 
no good thing. In the spirit of faith we put our 
hope and trust in God, the mind's thought- 
pictures become clear, there is perfect fearless- 
ness, and every faculty of mind functions in the 
way it was intended from the beginning. 

We make our lives complex and hard to live 
by departing from the great essential things of 
life and living in the non-essentials, but we can 
be what we will to be, through love and faith. 
Character-building is not making something out 
of nothing, but it is the right use of the talents 
with which we are endowed. We do not build 
character through or by the external knowledge 
of life. The real fountain of wisdom has its 
source in the secret places of the Most High, 
"whether there be tongues, they shall cease; 
whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish 
away;" but wisdom, the word of God in the life, 
shall endure forever. 

Let us learn to be thoroughly consistent; let 
us see that the law in its action discloses to us 
an evolution from witkin rather than an accu- 
mulation of knowledge from without. Faith is 
the great vitalizing force of the universe; it heals 



Faith in Character- Building 69 

the sick, gives sight to the blind, it is more real 
than anything we can see or touch. Faith is 
not belief. Without faith, works are dead, yet 
the real manifestation of faith becomes evident 
through works. In character-building we re- 
quire faith in God, in man, and in ourselves, as 
well as in whatever we undertake. If we are 
lacking in faith life becomes a failure; abiding 
in faith, all things tend toward success. Some- 
time the importance and value of faith in the 
life, will become so thoroughly understood that 
doubt will have no place. 

MEDITATION 

Our Father, we greatly desire that the real 
substance of life may so flow through our being, 
we may become rooted and grounded in faith. 
We know that without Thy faith we can accom- 
plish nothing, but that in living and realizing 
faith to be the one eternal substance from which 
all things proceed, we may become filled with 
Thy perfect health and strength, which are 
manifested as holiness of mind and wholeness of 
body. In Thee, O Father, is the wholeness of 
faith; in us the part. Make us to realize that 
the whole and the part are one, that there may 
be no sense of separateness, that we may know 
that Thy life is our life, and that from Thee 
comes every good and perfect gift. 



70 Dominion and Power 

Give us more of Thy faith that we may have 
faith in Thee, faith in our fellow-man, faith in 
the power with which Thou hast endowed us. 
We know, O Father, that as the fulness of Thy 
faith enters into our lives we can be that which 
we will to be, because Thy will is ever present 
with us. We can will to be strong, we can will 
to be happy, we can will to do unto others as we 
would have others do unto us, and we know that 
through faith will come the perfect fulfillment in 
which every thought shall so express itself, that 
Thy will shall be made manifest on earth as it is 
in heaven. 




HOPE IN CHARACTER-BUILDING 

" And opens still, and opens on his soul ; 
Till lengthen'd on to Faith, and unconfined, 
It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind. 
He sees why Nature plants in man alone 
Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown : 
(Nature, whose dictates to no other kind 
Are given in vain, but what they seek they find). 
Wise is her present ; she connects in this 
His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss." 

—Pope. 

41 Your life is all ready and waiting for you. 
Not all of its gifts come at once, it is true : 
They are scattered along; — you will not fail to find, 
If you walk in the way so divinely designed. 
Faint prophecies often will haunt you ; and gleams 
Of pleasant things coming will flit through your dreams. 
Sweet glimpses of days beyond range of your view, 
Yet still they are formed, and are coming to you." 

— Lilian Whiting. 

Faith and hope are so closely related, it is 
difficult to speak of one as apart from the other. 
Hope has an important office in life, for it is the 
foundation on which faith builds; there can be 
no living faith without hope. It is because we 
know in part that we have hope for still greater 
things. Before the spirit of hope, gloom and 
doubt must pass away; hope tends to clear and 
improve the mental vision, and rest comes to the 

71 



72 Dominion and Power 

mind because of its presence. All the pessi- 
mism of the world has never had the tendency 
to make man better, and we know that happi- 
ness is as far from pessimism as the North Pole 
is from the South. With the inner realization 
of hope will come an outer expression, which in 
itself will be a gospel of joy and glad tidings of 
peace and good-will, giving hope and courage 
to others. 

Life is one eternal round of progress; in its 
spiral motion, one height reached discloses still 
another, making hope an eternal factor in man's 
development. Hope is a never-failing spring; 
from it we drink the waters which quench the 
thirst occasioned by the unrest of doubt and 
despair. Let us learn to place our hope and 
trust in the Eternal Father who brought us into 
existence — that Father who has cared for us 
and has given to us of every attribute which He 
possesses; given them to us that we may use 
them to become God's representative on this 
earth. Let us learn to be hopeful in all things, 
knowing that whatever comes to us, brings a 
lesson that will work for our good and profit. 
Under seemingly the most adverse circum- 
stances, hope is to be found if we seek it, and 
it will aid us to overcome all difficulties. Live 
in the spirit of love, let hope do its perfect 
work and let the faith which is in thee be 



Hope in Character- Building 73 

the substance from which the whole life is 
fashioned. 

MEDITATION 

O, Spirit of Hope, which proceedeth from the 
Infinite Mind to brighten and make glad the 
life of man, enter then into my life and find an 
abiding-place, giving peace and joy, so that the 
outer life may be radiant because of thy pres- 
ence ! We know that where thy light is there 
can be no darkness, where thy strength is there 
can be no weakness. Like a star, bright with 
promise, shine on the pathway of life, be to us a 
guiding light to direct us in the way of truth. 
Resting in thy spirit, O Hope, love's dawning 
will become the sunlight of a new day, and Faith, 
thy wondrous sister, will be the crowning mani- 
festation of life. 

" Auspicious Hope ! in thy sweet garden grow 
Wreaths for each toil, a charm for every woe ; 
Won by their sweets, in Nature's languid hour, 
The way-worn pilgrim seeks thy summer bower ; 
There, as the. wild bee murmurs on the wing, 
What peaceful dreams thy handmaid spirits bring ! 
What viewless forms th' ^Eolian organ play, 
And sweep the furrow'd line of anxious thought away." 

— Campbell. 



LOVE IN CHARACTER-BUILDING 

" Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, 
But looks through Nature up to Nature's God ; 
Pursues that chain which links the immense design, 
Joins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine ; 
Sees that no being any bliss can know, 
But touches some above, and some below; 
Learns from this union of the rising whole, 
The first, last purpose of the human soul ; 
And knows where faith, law, morals, all began, 
All end, in Love of God y and Love of Man." 

— Popk. 

"There's no good of life — but love — but love ; 
"What else looks good is but some shade flung from love- 
Gilds it — gives it worth." 

— Browning. 

It is not possible to understand in our minds 
the nature of God-love. In our souls we may 
feel and know, but language is dumb when we 
try to express through spoken words the ful- 
ness of love. For oft are we deceived by its 
counterfeit, emotion, which is awakened by some 
external influence brought to bear on the mind. 
We may rest assured of the fact that no element 
of selfishness enters into divine love, that jeal- 
ousy is no part of it. Love, like the air we 
breathe, is universal ; it is in us and we are in it, 
and yet we may be blind to its influence. It is 

74 



Love in Character- Building 75 

God ever present with us, even though we are 
unaware of the Presence. 

Love is the fulfilling of the law. Where one 
consciously abides in love there can be no 
thought or act contrary to law. It is the law of 
the spirit of life which makes us free from the 
law of sin and death. He who lives in this law, 
abides in the shadow of the Almighty ; no evil 
thing shall befall him, for love taketh no account 
of evil, there being no sense of separateness in 
love. Evil comes into the life of man, because 
of his thought of separateness from God. Love 
is the eternal sunshine of life, and to one living 
in that sunshine, there can be no darkness. 
Under its influence the external universe radi- 
ates a heavenly beauty, and perfection is every- 
where apparent. Where love is there is kind- 
ness ; every thought becomes a perfect deed. 

Love is the pearl of great price, and its posses- 
sion includes all else. Love in the life of man 
radiates in all directions, influencing every per- 
son who comes in contact with it, and changing 
every condition in life. Only as we love do we 
become really conscious of living, and without 
love we are dead — dead to a knowledge of God 
and man ; dead to a knowledge of our real selves. 
The resurrection to the life eternal comes with 
the conscious recognition of the divine love 
working in us to will and to do. When we de- 



J 6 Dominion and Power 

sire love with our whole thought, and keep the 
mind restful, then will love come to us and bless 
us, bringing perfect happiness and that peace of 
God which passeth all understanding. 

MEDITATION 

Infinite and eternal Source of love, many have 
been the names by which Thou hast been called, 
but the Master has taught us the most beautiful 
of all Thy names, the name we may utter with 
our lips, but far and above all else, feel in our 
hearts : Love — love that transcends all thought 
or understanding; love that illumines the soul 
and glorifies the life. 

Our Father, Thy love is in all, through all, and 
above all. The tiniest dew-tipped flower is as 
much an expression of Thy love as is the radiant 
sun. Thy love gives color and beauty to all things. 
May it color and beautify our lives, transform 
and renew our very being. We know that dwell- 
ing in Thy love, no evil thing can befall us ; that 
when it dwells in the heart, the mind is serene 
and our lives radiate the sunshine of Thy love. 
May its influx be so great that we show forth 
its divine presence in thought, in word, and in 
deed. We fervently desire that it may abide in 
us and we abide in it, that we may love Thee 
and one another as Thou hast loved us. 



PRAYER 

•'Silently and unobserved, the Spirit will breathe upon us 
if we reflect, if we wait for it in stillness day by day. * * * * 
It steals into our consciousness when we think deeply, to 
guide, to strengthen, to heal, to encourage. The great secret 
of life is to know how, in our own way, to be receptive to it, 
how to read the message of its inner whispering. The sure 
method of growing strong in realization of its nearness is to 
believe it will come if we listen, to trust it in moments of 
doubt as the lost hunter trusts his horse in the forest, to have 
an ideal outlook, and then renew our realization day by day, 
ever remembering that, as this Spirit is the only Reality, the 
one power, the one love, we live in it, and with it, and there 
is naught to separate us from its ever- watchful care, its ever- 
loving presence." 

— H. W. Dresser. 

The nature and value of prayer are not under- 
stood at the present time as they will be in the 
future. New conceptions of God and immutable 
law will bring a greater significance and a deeper 
realization of what prayer really is and what it 
accomplishes. The time will come — and now is 
— when he who prays will understand that not 
only the desire, but the fulfillment of the desire, 
is in the prayer itself. This may seem strange 
to some, nevertheless it is true. There is every- 
thing in the world needful for man's physical 
welfare, and, also, there is everything in his 
world of consciousness necessary for his spir- 

77 



78 Dominion and Power 

itual welfare, and if he but relates himself in the 
true way to the laws of life he will draw from 
the visible and the invisible everything for his 
well-being. 

Desire is the starting-point in all true prayer. 
Right desire asks nothing contrary to universal 
will or law, but becomes one with it. When a 
man asks to be forgiven he must become one 
with the spirit of forgiveness, knowing that only 
as he has forgiv^g can there be forgiveness for 
him, and with a complete and full forgiveness 
for all others comes the complete and full for- 
giveness for himself. His prayer is answered 
through his own act. 

The higher understanding will show that 
there is no divine system of rewards and pun- 
ishments meted out for good or evil deeds by a 
God who gives bountifully to one and withholds 
from another. Viewed superficially, prosperity 
on one side and failure on the other might seem 
to indicate that the reverse of this is true. Never- 
theless law and order reign supreme throughout 
God's great universe. To some this destroys 
the thought of God as a hearer and answerer of 
prayer, but it is the indwelling God that is the 
hearer and answerer of prayer, and as man 
shapes his life in accord with universal will his 
every desire is fulfilled. 

The universal, the all-pervading soul, requires 



Prayer 79 

nothing of the individual other than obedience 
to the law which makes for the individual good, 
but the individual requires that his every need 
shall be supplied from the Universal Giver of 
all good, and, therefore, as man understands his 
relation to the source of his being, and keeps in 
direct, conscious communion with that source, 
his mind comes under the control and direction 
of the universal will. He discovers within him- 
self increasing powers and wondrous possibilities 
— powers and possibilities which can only be 
realized through his conscious nearness to God. 
God is ever present with him, and His omnipo- 
tence and omniscience become the great living 
factors of man's life. Therefore, when he prays, 
it is not with the thought of receiving, but with 
the knowledge that he already possesses, and 
that his very highest ideal must take form in the 
world in which he lives — that he is working with 
God to create a new world. 

To many it may seem that this world is 
already created, but it is only in the process of 
creation. Man, as the instrument of universal 
will, is destined to bring about the final perfec- 
tion of the world in which he lives, so that God's 
kingdom may be perfected outwardly ; but this 
will only be accomplished by man through a 
realization of perfect ideals and a desire, or 
prayer, on his part, to see them expressed. 



80 Dominion and Power 

We see, then, that the nature of prayer is in 
consciously becoming one with the intelligence 
and power of the universe. The perfect ideal of 
what life is may find lodgment in the mind of 
man. The purpose of prayer is a creative pro- 
cess whereby inner ideals express themselves 
in outer forms or symbols. 

Words are not of much importance in prayer, 
although we can conceive true motive shaping 
itself into word. Let it be understood that the 
good or the evil prayer carries within itself its 
own reward, and we will better understand what 
the Master meant when he said: "And when 
thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites 
are, for they love to pray standing in the syn- 
agogues and in the corners of the street that 
they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto 
you they have their reward." That is, the un- 
derlying desire of their prayer was to be seen 
and heard of men, and being both seen and 
heard, that constituted their reward. That was 
the fulfillment of their desire. " But thou, when 
thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when 
thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father 
which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth 
in secret will reward thee openly." 

The idea herein contained is that when we 
pray it should not be with the thought of at- 
tracting attention, nor should there be any ex- 



Prayer 81 

traneous side in our prayer, but rather an enter- 
ing into a conscious knowledge of the highest. 
The open reward is the inner prayer becoming 
outwardly expressed through all things needful 
to the outer life. "For your Father knoweth 
what things ye have need of before ye ask Him." 
The full meaning of this is that the universal 
mind knows what every part needs, and the part 
that is consciously, rightly related to the whole, 
has its every need supplied. Prayer not only 
gives form to human life, but shapes everything 
in the world about it. We often pray for things 
we really do not want — that is, after we get 
them, we find, instead of bringing happiness or 
gain, they bring unhappiness and loss. We re- 
ceive from the wrong praying just the same as 
from the right. Reward goes with both When 
things of an unpleasant nature come into our 
lives we may not desire them, but the unpleasant 
condition has been brought about through the 
wrong desire. Let us remember that whatever 
good comes to us in this life never comes at the 
expense of another. Therefore, if a desire of 
ours be contrary to good in the life of some one 
else, then, though that desire be gratified, it will 
not bring us happiness. In our prayers we 
should have clear ideals of what we want to be 
and do, and we must remember that our own 
good is bound up in the good of all. 



82 Dominion and Power 

If we use words in prayer let them be strong, 
simple, and direct. The Master said to his dis- 
ciples that if they must use words he would 
give them an example. After this manner pray 
ye : " Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed 
be Thy name." 

We first note that he uses the term, Our 
Father — the universal Father, the one Father 
of all. He discards the thought of personality 
by saying which art in heaven. The heaven of 
Jesus is different from that commonly believed 
in and held to by many of his followers; his 
heaven is located in man's own life. It is a God 
within, not without his consciousness. 

Hallowed be Thy name — meaning by this 
that when we approach communion, or union, 
with God, it should be in the spirit of reverence 
— not with mere words, but with our highest 
desires and deepest feelings. 

"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in 
earth as it is in heaven." If it is the commonly 
accepted view of heaven, how are we to know 
whether God's will is kept any more fully there 
than on this earth? But, if it is something in 
our own lives, then we can determine for our- 
selves. In the soul of man God dwells eternally 
steadfast. When we enter the higher conscious- 
ness we leave the plane of the temporal for that 
which is permanent, that which is eternal. 



Prayer 83 

Love, faith, and hope are all found at the center 
of being, but are not always expressed in the 
outer world. We experience happiness from 
living our inmost ideals; again, we experience 
sorrow because we form the ideal in the outer. 
The thought of Jesus is to get the right desire 
into the mind, so that God's will may be done 
through mind and body and in the outer world, 
just as it is done in the world of cause. 

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in 
earth as it is in heaven. The earth, the world, 
referred to by Jesus, is not so much this planet, 
but rather the mind-world. He is not taking 
exception to God's beautiful earth — because he 
knows that we draw the things needful for the 
sustenance of the body from this earth — but the 
worldly mind, which loses the consciousness of 
an inner life and lives in external things. There 
may be a perfect expression of the universal will 
through soul and mind and body. 

In this prayer of Jesus there is one statement 
which seems to be an appeal for earthly things, 
and such a construction is often put upon it. 
Let us see if it be true. " Give us this day our 
daily bread." Jesus had always the highest 
conceptions of life. He knew that there was a 
"Bread of Life" far more needful to man than 
purely material bread, that "man should not 
live by bread alone, but by every word which 



84 Dominion and Power 

proceedeth out of the mouth of God." In the 
greater bread the lesser was included. 

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our 
debtors." Every time we pray that part of the 
Lord's Prayer, if there is one thought of unfor- 
giveness in the mind, we are praying to the 
great universal mind not to forgive us ; because 
forgiveness only comes as the eternal law is 
observed, only when we in our minds have given 
full and complete forgiveness to others. "For- 
give," he said, "and ye shall be forgiven." If 
we have a wrong thought or an evil thought 
concerning any one else, then that thought is 
stored up against ourselves. "Judge not and ye 
shall not be judged." "Condemn not and ye 
shall not be condemned." "Forgive and ye 
shall be forgiven." 

There is another thought in this question of 
forgiveness of which we have lost sight. To for- 
give is to forgive out of your own fulness, what- 
ever that may be, and through this outgiving 
comes the greater giving to you again. Man is 
the highest channel on earth through which the 
universal spirit acts, and in this forgiving you 
are transmitting from your own life God's gifts 
to others, and you are opening the way to a 
greater receiving, because only as we give, or 
forgive, do we receive or are we forgiven. 

The Christ idea of life is that the life and the 



Prayer 85 

intelligence in every individual are one with the 
life and intelligence of all individuals and all 
things; that when one injures any other life he 
injures his own. He understood the law that if 
evil is done to others, that evil becomes magni- 
fied; but if good is returned for evil, then the 
good always overcomes the evil. Jesus was 
right when he said : " Resist not evil, but over- 
come evil with good." 

We are coming now to the last statement 
made by Jesus, namely: "Lead us not into 
temptation, but deliver us from evil." If he 
made that statement, it was contrary to what he 
believed and taught. It would seem as if there 
were a mistake here. Perhaps a better transla- 
tion would give it in this way: Leave us not 
in temptation. 

Jesus must have known that there could be 
no growth in life without temptation, that temp- 
tation is necessary to the development of man. 
If we could realize, when tempted, that God 
would not leave us, and that through His 
strength we might overcome temptation, then 
would we have attained to the real mastery 01 
life. 

PRAYER 

Eternal Spirit of love and wisdom, we would 
unfold our desires to Thee, because we realize 
that Thou art the hearer and answerer of prayer. 



86 Dominion and Power 

We can give to Thee, nothing — but Thou givest 
every good thing to us. Everything necessary 
to life, to health, to happiness, is given by Thee 
to all Thy children who pray and ask aright. 
We would ask Thee for greater influx of Thy 
love and wisdom, so that we may know how to 
pray aright. May a deeper realization bring to 
us the knowledge that the heart's desire carries 
within itself its own fulfillment; that the desire 
for love and wisdom is that which makes love 
and wisdom ours, and is that which relates us to 
the universal love and wisdom. 

We do not wish to come into communion 
with Thee with any worldly desires in mind; 
rather would we seek Thy kingdom within our 
own highest consciousness; find Thy spirit of 
love and truth dwelling in us, and forever abid- 
ing with us. We would pray for the eternal 
riches which can not pass away; that peace and 
love which passeth understanding should for- 
ever be ours, and we know of a very truth, that 
having all that is highest and best in life, all 
lesser things are included; that when we con- 
sciously realize Thy kingdom in our lives, do- 
minion and power are ours in the outer world ; 
that all things are ours, and with the spirit of 
peace and love, we repose in the blessed assur- 
ance that all we have asked of Thee will be 
granted. Thou knowest our every need, and 



Prayer 



87 



we rest assured that our every need will be sup- 
plied on all planes of our being. Make us one 
with Thy truth, and one with Thy wisdom and 
love, so that we may come into the perfect ful- 
ness of life, and, blessed, indwelling Father, Thy 
name shall have all the honor and glory forever. 
Amen. 




BREATH 

•• Breathe on me, Breath of God, 
Fill me with life anew, 
That I may love what Thou dost love, 
And do what Thou wouldst do ! 

* ' Breathe on me, Breath of God, 
Until my heart is pure, 
Until with Thee I will one will, 
To do or to endure ! 

" Breathe on me, Breath of God, 
Till I am wholly Thine, 
Till all this earthly part of me 
Glows with Thy fire divine ! 

" Breathe on me, Breath of God, 
So I shall never die, 
But live with Thee the perfect life 
Of Thine eternity ! " 

— E. Hatch. 

*' The freer step, the fuller breath, 
The wide horizon's grander view, 
The sense of life that knows no death. 
The life that maketh all things new." 

— Samuel Longfellow. 

" He who gives breath, He who gives strength, whose 
command all the bright gods revere, whose shadow is immor- 
tality." 

— Sacred Books of the East. 

"When the body is light and without disease, the mind 
without desire, when the colour is shining, sweet the voice 

88 



Breath 89 

and pleasant the smell, when the excrements are few, they 
say, the first degree of concentration is gained. 

"As a piece (of gold or silver) covered with earth, when 
cleansed, shines like light, so the embodied soul, when be- 
holding the true nature of the soul (of itself), becomes one, 
obtains its true end, and every pain ceases. 

" When, absorbed in this concentration (the Yogi) sees by 
the true nature of his own self, which manifests like a light, 
the true nature of Brahma, which is not born, eternal and free 
from all effects of nature (or, as S'ankara explains 'tattwa,' 
from the effects of ignorance), he gets released from all bonds. 

" To God who is in the fire, who is in the water, who 
entered the universe, who is in the annual herbs, and who is 
in the regents of the forest (the trees), to this God be rever- 
ence, to Him be reverence. 

" Not in the sight abides His form, none beholds Him by 
the eye. Those who know Him dwelling in the heart (in the 
ether of the heart), by the heart (pure intellect) and mind, be- 
come immortal. 

"After breath breathe the Gods — men and animals; for 
breath is the life of all the creatures. Therefore it is called 
the life of all. All those who worship breath as Brahma, 
attain the last limit of life, for breath is the life of creatures; 
therefore it is called the life of all. This (life) even is the 
embodied soul of the former (nutritious sheath). Different 
from that (soul) which consists of vital air, is an (other) 
inner soul, which consists of mind." 

— The Upanishads. 

It is not possible at the present time to form 
any adequate estimate of the true value of rightly 
controlled breath, all theories believed in and 
held to, in the past, fall so far short of what is 
really true concerning the wonderful benefits to 



90 Dominion and Power 

be gained both in mind and body through an 
understanding and use of the function of breath- 
ing. There is no question, however, but that 
the minds of thoughtful people are becoming 
more interested and desirous of knowledge upon 
the subject to enable them to use this function in 
a tr ue and natural way. Some may ask, If a cer- 
tain way of breathing is natural, why do people 
have to be taught how to do it ? I would answer : 
We live such unnatural lives that there is hardly 
anything we do which is really natural, or, in 
other words, thoroughly in accord with the laws 
of life; so we must be taught how to be "natural." 
We must know the law and then comply with it. 
The one thing upon which stress is laid by 
medical and scientific men is that oxygen is the 
all-important element in the atmosphere to be 
inbreathed ; that it is the element which keeps 
the blood pure and from which life is derived. 
But oxygen is not life — no matter what our 
scientific friends may think about it. It is only 
one of many properties proceeding from the 
Great Life. Everything necessary to sustain the 
physical man is to be found in the atmosphere 
he breathes. It may not consist alone of the 
organic elements, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, 
and carbonic acid gas, but of countless infinites- 
imal life-germs, and it may be that the body, 
from first to last, is composed of these life-germs, 



Breath 91 

which we have breathed in from the atmosphere 
about us, and that every cell in the body is a 
living organism, endowed with a life and intelli- 
gence of its own. Furthermore, the time is not 
far distant when consciously we shall take from 
the atmosphere through the right use of the 
breath, nearly, if not all, the nourishment neces- 
sary to complete and sustain the body — no 
matter whether that nourishment is contained 
in the atmospheric elements, or whether it is 
breathed in from the myriad of life-germs in the 
atmosphere, or both. 

It is generally conceded by the scientific world, 
now, that some kinds of bacteria add to the 
nourishing properties of food; for example, those 
which infest milk. It is also a well-known fact 
that these same germs improve the quality of 
butter. That bacteria are necessary to the up- 
building and sustaining of vegetable and animal 
life seems to be shown by the fact that when 
milk is exposed in high altitudes, beyond the 
range of animal and vegetable life, the bacteria 
no longer enter into it. This would tend to 
show the wonderful economy of nature, for only 
where there is organic life is there the where- 
withal to sustain it. 

Some may ask, Why is it if nourishment can 
be inbreathed, that people have to eat so much 
food? When we take into consideration the 



92 Dominion and Power 

fact that people ordinarily are using only one- 
sixth of their lung capacity, is it to be wondered 
at that they eat a large amount of food ? Sup- 
pose the lungs were developed to their full 
capacity, might not the result be far different? 
In the many cases which have come under my 
observation of people who have made a study of 
the use and control of breath, without exception 
they all eat less, many reducing their food by 
one-half and a few even going beyond that, in 
every case with beneficial results. It was not 
that they themselves had any desire to lessen 
the quantity of food eaten, but it was rather the 
result of growth, a natural change. 

Again, it may be said that the lower animals 
eat and that it is natural for them to do so. 
Very true, and it may be perfectly natural for 
man to replenish his body in the same way, and 
yet, there may come a time when all the food 
necessary can be taken by breathing it directly 
from the atmosphere. 

It may be asked of what use will be the diges- 
tive organs if man is to obtain his food by breath- 
ing. I would suggest that while those organs 
have been necessary in the past and may still be 
for a time in the future, man in a higher stage 
of development will use them in a different way. 
Evolution has shown us that as organs of the 
body become unnecessary they are reduced in 



Breath 93 

size, sometimes disappearing altogether, or they 
assume a new office. 

A few words now in regard to the extra 
capacity of the lungs — the using of only one- 
sixth and apparently getting along so well. 
What is the especial good of the other five- 
sixths? As nature has shown us that nothing 
was ever created without a purpose would it 
not be the part of wisdom to find out something 
about the use of this other five-sixths? If we 
breathe as we should it will not be possible for us 
to have weak or diseased lungs. We know that 
if an organ is not used weakness must come, and 
that it is only one more step to disease. Is it 
any wonder that more people in our country die 
of lung disease than of any other malady? — and 
not of disease of the lungs only, but of other dis- 
abilities coming from failure to breathe properly? 

Plants and many kinds of fish breathe in 
nourishment. It might argue a retrograde move- 
ment on the part of man if only the lowest forms 
of life take their sustenance from the atmosphere; 
but this would really be no argument, for the 
fish and the plant in their limited capacity are 
perfect. Man has not yet attained to his per- 
fection ; but when he does attain it he may de- 
velop the power to nourish and sustain his 
physical form by the indrawing of life from the 
atmosphere. 



94 Dominion and Power 

Physical poise is absolutely necessary for per- 
fect breathing. The body can only be kept 
poised as it is held there by the mind. As one's 
thought is centered the body becomes erect. 
When the thought habit is established, it, in 
turn, establishes the physical habit. Physical 
exercise of all kinds, such as walking, running, 
riding, etc., are all good, but we must never lose 
sight of the fact that it is the mental exhilaration 
that gives us the true effect; that the mere phys- 
ical act itself is not enough, and it is the enjoy- 
ment which we get from it that tends to renew 
and strengthen. When anything done in the 
physical realm becomes monotonous, so that we 
lose interest, it will bring little benefit to the 
body. We should learn to be thoroughly inter- 
ested in everything we do and then both work 
and play will prove beneficial. 

In doing things in the right way there are 
always two actions — the action from the center 
out and a return, or reflex action, proving the 
law that whatever we give out will return to us. 
Remember, "the reflex action" must ever be 
the result of the true inner action, so that we 
have mind and body acting and re-acting in per- 
fect harmony. 

Desire exerts a marked influence on the breath. 
When our desires are natural and true the 
breath is even and strong. The man living on 



Breath 95 

the animal plane, who is temperate and strong 
in mind, in so far as he has developed, will 
breathe abdominally, with slow, steady action, 
and he will be noted as one physically strong. 
If on this plane a man's passions are allowed full 
sway, the breath-center changes from the ab- 
domen to the chest, and the respiration becomes 
short and quick in its action. This change is 
due to the mental desire which takes possession 
of the man. When high and noble thought 
enters into the life of a man and finds an abiding 
place there, he becomes self-centered. 

Perhaps a word of explanation is necessary 
on "self-centering." I mean by it that when a 
man realizes his true relationship to God and 
his fellow-man and seeks to control his life from 
his highest conscious thought, he becomes self- 
centered, or, in other words, he has found his 
true center. When one is self-centered the 
breath finds its center at the diaphragm, and 
that this is the true center of breathing is proved 
by all mental and physical action. The dia- 
phragm divides the abdominal cavity from the 
thoracic, acting as the ceiling to one and the 
floor to the other, and when the breath is di- 
rected to it — or to the center of the body — it 
moves all the organs above and below, thus 
equalizing the circulation of both blood and 
nervous systems. 



96 Dominion and Power 

Too little attention is paid to diaphragmatic 
breathing, and everything which tends either 
mentally or physically to interfere with it should 
be corrected. An eminent physician has said 
that nine-tenths of the women were atrophied be- 
low the waist — the result of tight dressing. An 
instance was given me of the effect of centered 
or diaphragmatic breathing upon the mind in 
the case of some college students who declared 
that it made them feel more manly and inspired 
them with a desire for higher things. 

This physical center is the great center of 
feeling; the brain is the great thought-center. 
As thought is the product of feeling, then the 
solar plexus must be the vital center of being, 
and some day the scientific world will recognize 
this fact. From this center is generated the 
magnetic currents of life. Thought generates 
the electric force. The blending of the two 
forces converts them into one, bringing about 
the perfect poise of mind and body. 

Perhaps no race of people has paid so much 
attention to breath-action as the Hindu. In 
talking with one of their very wise men he told 
me that many of the things done by the Fakirs 
of India, which seem so strange and mysterious 
to the people of the West, were produced by 
breath-action and thought-concentration. Fur- 
thermore, the Upanishads lay more stress upon 



Breath 97 

the breath than upon anything else, and in their 
summing up of God the very last phrase used 
is, "which is the Breath of Life." Our own 
Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments, 
have reference after reference to the breath, as, 
"The Lord God made man of the dust of the 
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the 
Breath of Life, and man became a living soul." 
"The spirit of the Lord hath formed me." "The 
breath of the Almighty hath given me life ;" and 
" He breathed upon them and said, ' Receive ye 
the Holy Ghost.'" 

If we draw with the inbreath (as many sci- 
entists claim that we do) life-giving properties 
from the vegetation about us, and the vegeta- 
tion in turn is benefited by our outgoing breath, 
it shows the inter-relation between man and the 
lower forms of life, and that all life is one, and 
that the true relation consists in a mutual giving 
and receiving, which holds good even from the 
least to the greatest of things. 

It has been thought by many that the incom- 
ing breath was the all-important one, that if we 
inbreathed large volumes of air, it made little 
difference how we exhaled. The reverse of this 
is true. Only as we know how to exhale can 
we inhale as we should. Nature abhors a 
vacuum. Exhale in a perfect way and you 
need give no thought to the inhaling. Con- 



98 Dominion and Power 

trol the outgoing breath with the diaphragm; 
from the time you begin to exhale, keep the 
breath even and steady. Do not let it escape in 
gasps, but in a perfectly even flow. By placing 
the hand on the diaphragm the breath becomes 
centered, and you breathe from there. There is 
no rising or falling of the chest with this breath, 
and it should be without strain or tension of any 
kind. 

In trying to acquire the use of the breath 
in this way, one should have high and exalted 
thoughts in the mind. If we would have noble 
aspirations with the incoming breath, we must 
then give out beautiful thoughts with the out- 
going breath; because in the giving we receive, 
and the giving is always with the outgoing 
breath, and the receiving with the incoming. 
Breathe out. thoughts of kindness, courage, 
hope, joy, and gladness; then the breath will be 
pure and sweet — it can not be otherwise. We 
do not yet know how much the breath has to 
do with atmospheric conditions, but it may yet 
be known that the very atmosphere about us 
is purified and electrified by the controlled 
breath which carries with it high and helpful 
thoughts. There is a science in thought and 
breath which some day all will wish to master, 
and through such mastery will man take his 
rightful place as the real lord of creation. 



Breath g§ 

When breathing in feel that there is an influx 
from the divine, bringing with it health and 
strength and all things needful. When breathing 
out, give to the world that health and strength, 
and in the perfect giving will come the abundant 
renewing. Contagion and disease lurk in the evil 
thought and the bated breath, while the contagion 
of health is found in the right thought and the 
controlled breath. Let each thought be rein- 
forced by true feeling and it will go out as a 
messenger of good, and become a living thing 
in some other mind. With control of thought 
and mastery of breath there could never be 
such a thing as a nervous disorder. It may be 
that the breath causes the vibration which car- 
ries the true thought-picture of life to some 
other mind; it may be God's word that is 
breathed into the very life of man, so that the 
thought of Jesus breathing on his disciples but 
symbolizes the great creative power as transmit- 
ting His own life and love to His beloved chil- 
dren. And the breath of the Almighty hath 
given thee life. In thinking be positive. Dwell 
in the affirmative. There can be no failures in 
life when man lives on the affirmative side. 
Only the negative fails. In the control of 
thought and breath there is a positive action; 
there is a poised state of mind and body ; there 
is force under control. 

tOFCc ' 



iod Dominion and Power 

May we not be starting up on a new round of 
evolution, which will tend to make man in every 
sense greater than he has been in the past and 
with more wonderful capacities? Many scien- 
tists believe that the evolution of man has 
reached its highest limit, and that any decided 
change would tend rather to develop him ab- 
normally. For instance, if man gained in his 
brain-power it would be at the expense of his 
body. This need not be true. When the lungs 
are used to their full capacity the physical man 
will keep pace with the intellectual. The phys- 
ical perfection of the race has not yet been at- 
tained, and will not be until man has learned to 
control the full force of his own life. 

MEDITATION 

O, Soul, rejoice and be glad! Sing unto the 
Lord a new song; a song that shall tell of His 
loving goodness and His compassionate tender- 
ness; a song that shall burst forth in joy, be- 
cause of the presence of His divine spirit, which 
filleth thy life with the perfect happiness of 
living. His presence is ever with thee, so that 
thy life partakes of His omnipotence, thy under- 
standing of His omniscience. He breathes in 
and through thee the vital breath of life, and 
never leaves or forsakes, but is ever with thee. 
The sunshine of His glory illumines thy every 



Breath 101 

way. And His beneficence encompasseth thee. 
Let the new song which is in thy life sound 
forth in the world about thee. Let the inner 
glory and joy call out aloud to those who dwell 
in the shadows of life, that they may awaken 
and sing with thee the new song. Breathe upon 
the world what the spirit hath breathed in thee, 
that thou shalt aid in making the kingdom man- 
ifest, and in thee, through thee, and about thee 
shall God's perfect will be done. 

This is thy high, thy holy office; and let 
God's word shine as a beacon light, pointing out 
the way that leads to the life eternal. And in 
doing this hope shall so fill the souls and minds 
of those who are cast down that their eyes will 
be uplifted, and they shall see the divine; faith 
will so transfigure their lives that they will give 
expression to God's perfect likeness, and love 
will so radiate from the center of their being 
that it will unite them with all souls, causing 
them to become one with the universal soul. 

Rejoice and be glad; for in thy life the Christ 
hath arisen. In thee the Holy One of Israel is 
born. The Son of Righteousness has come 
with healing in his wings, and the glory of the 
Lord is about thee! Give thanks and praise 
the Lord, for His mercy endureth forever. 



SUCCESS 
Part One 

** All fame is foreign, but of true desert; 
Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart; 
One self-approving hour whole years outweighs 
Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas; 
And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels, 
Than Caesar with a senate at his heels." 

— Pope. 

"Two things are invariably necessary to successful work, 
no matter what its line may be: first, the love thereof; second, 
confidence in the success thereof. Only as we love can we 
work beautifully, harmonically, courageously. Courage comes 
with love; it is love alone that makes tasks easy and fingers 
fly fast." 

— W. J. Colville. 

Very few people care to question the desira- 
bility of success in life, and yet many doubtless 
differ as to what constitutes real success. Some 
view success from the standpoint of the accumu- 
lation of material wealth; others see success in 
political or social preferment; still others in 
public recognition of literary or artistic ability. 
One person might attain to all these varying 
possibilities of life and yet not be really success- 
ful. Real success must be measured by a stand- 
ard other than by the possession of any or all 
the things previously mentioned. A truly suc- 
cessful life carries with it something more than 
102 



Success 103 

the possession of riches or any worldly recog- 
nition. 

The elements of success are inherent in every 
individual. The possibility of greatness is latent 
in every soul, and greatness may take on one 
phase or another, resulting in one or manifold 
expressions. That few people do really become 
great or attain to real success in life is not 
because they are lacking in possibilities, but 
because they refuse to follow the highest dic- 
tates of their own conscience, or because they 
are too lazy, either mentally, physically, or 
morally. It is hard to make some people realize 
that success must be attained through their own 
efforts ; they think that luck or chance is going to 
bring about a condition whereby they will profit. 

Now, the way of life is a strait and nar- 
row one, and the man or woman who refuses 
to recognize it as such, can not hope to attain 
to any real or lasting success, because success 
in life has for its foundation the development of 
character. If there is lack of character, there 
can be no permanent success. People without 
character have sometimes the shadow, that is, 
certain external evidences of success, but if you 
could look behind the masks of life you would 
find that they were deficient in the substance. 
All is not gold that glitters. All is not success 
that seems to be success. 



t04 Dominion and Power 

If young men starting out in life with a busi- 
ness or a professional career ahead of them 
could rightly discern some of the real require- 
ments of life, and turn their minds to the accom- 
plishment of certain definite action whereby they 
would develop their latent power and mental 
faculties wherewith to use that power, the true 
way of success would then lie open to them. 

Let us consider some of the elements which 
make for success: First of all, the development 
of the love-nature which results in kindness of 
thought, of word, and deed. It is just as easy 
to be kind, to think kindly and to act kindly, as 
to think unkindly or act disagreeably, and the 
effect on one's own mind, as well as on the 
minds of others, is far more beneficial. It makes 
life easier to live and more worth the living. 
Sometimes we forget this one great essential of 
character and become impatient and fault-find- 
ing with others. When we do this we are 
placing an obstruction in the way of success. 

Besides kindness there is another element: 
faith; faith in the people we have to deal 
with, faith in human nature. If we do not have 
faith and trust in people we are making it harder 
for them to have faith and trust in us. The 
thought we have in mind concerning them is 
what, sooner or later, they must feel, and it must 
result in an action in their minds which will call 



Success 105 

out the doubt and lack of faith we had in them, 
making them faithless to us as well as to others. 
How can a man have faith in himself and faith 
in his fellow-man if his interests are centered 
wholly in himself? We want to think of people 
always as we would have them be; in order to 
inspire them with faith we must have faith in 
them. We must believe in them and show them 
by our words and actions that we do believe in 
them. This will call out the best side of their 
natures. 

Having once started to do a thing, faith in 
one's own power and ability to accomplish the 
desired end is a necessary qualification to suc- 
cess. Hope, too, is an inspiring element tending 
to keep the mind cheerful and bright, impress- 
ing other minds and making everything easier 
of accomplishment. Much depends on clear- 
ness of mental vision — the faculty of perceiving 
things in their true relations and of judging 
them according to their value. 

Many people, with the very best intentions, 
make the mistake of seeing things as they would 
have them to be, taking no account of the diffi- 
culties which lie in the way, and when con- 
fronted by them lose hope and courage and 
are turned back. The result of this is that 
they lose faith in themselves, and other people 
lose faith in them, thereby making the second 



io6 Dominion and Power 

undertaking harder because of failure in the 
first. 

In all success there must be integrity of 
thought. This will find expression in just deeds. 
Integrity of thought is that quality in the life of 
man which seeks to know and understand things 
as they are, putting aside prejudice and bigotry, 
that the vision may not be dimmed, that the 
mind may see clearly, and so, through clear 
vision, can act rightly. Integrity of thought and 
of purpose cause man to adjust himself to his 
environment, and thus establish true relations 
between himself and his fellow-man, for a man's 
influence is determined by the clearness and in- 
tegrity of his thought and the directness and 
energy of his action. As the mind thinks 
clearly, it is better able to act with decision, as 
clear thought finds its effective conclusion in 
what one accomplishes in the outer world. 

Besides clearness of vision, let there be perse- 
verance. A thing may be difficult to do, far 
more difficult than was expected in the begin- 
ning, yet that is no reason why it should be 
relinquished ; in fact, it is the greater reason why 
it should receive all the energy of mind and 
body to carry it to its final completion. "What- 
soever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might." This was the injunction of one who 
knew far more about the mysteries and strug- 



Success 107 

gles of life than we do. He who turns away 
from anything because it is hard to do, will 
never succeed to any marked degree in anything 
he may undertake. But let him persevere, re- 
gardless of obstacles, and in doing thus he will 
strengthen his character and call out real cour- 
age. When a man puts his hand to the plough, 
he should feel, first of all, that it is the right 
thing to do; and he should courageously face 
any and every obstacle. Having brought the 
undertaking to a successful termination, it will 
be easier for him to succeed in his next. 

Sometimes everything looks dark. You have 
faith in the thing you want to accomplish; you 
have faith in the people about you; yet outer 
circumstances seem to conspire against you. 
This is the time for courage, this is the time to 
reinforce courage with hope. It is well, then, to 
remember that the great things in life do not 
come to us without effort; that it is only as we 
use energy, as we persevere, as we keep working 
day after day, that we accomplish that which we 
ardently desire. We fritter away our force 
when we try to do two or more things at the 
same time. When the mind is engaged in one . 
direction, and the hands in another, the mind 
and body both become tired. The man who 
keeps his mind centered upon whatever he has 
before him to do, will do it more easily and 



Io8 Dominion and Power 

better because of that mental attitude. There- 
fore, in the darkest hour, courage, hope, and 
perseverance are the qualities which will bring 
to us ultimate success. 

When we desire a thing greatly we should be 
willing to work for the accomplishment of the 
desire. The working for it should be a pleas- 
ure, and should not be considered as a burden, 
or even as a duty, but as a blessed privilege. 
What greater privilege can one have than to see 
the manifestation of his own ideals, to see the 
things that he has wrought out in his own mind 
taking on form in the world about him? There 
is nothing degrading or mean about labor, so 
long as that labor is unselfish, so long as that 
labor is going to benefit the world. It makes no 
difference whether a man tills the ground, or 
builds houses, or engages in mercantile life, 
whether a man is an artist or a day-laborer, his 
work is honorable if he gives it his honest 
thought and does not try to avoid the respon- 
sibilities coming to him. 

No matter what position a man may occupy 
in life, he is of use in that station and should 
occupy it until he can fill a better one, and he 
can never fill a better one until he has made 
himself, in a sense, proficient in • that one. He 
can make himself most proficient by doing his 
work in the best possible way, each day trying 



Success tog 

to do it better than the day before, gaining a 
little here and a little there. Through follow- 
ing this course he makes himself a necessity to 
his fellow-man. No matter what one does, he 
can do it best by entering into the spirit of the 
thing, by looking at the calling, whatever it may 
be, as one that is honorable and upright, and by 
doing the work cheerfully and well. The more 
cheerfulness and concentration we put into the 
things we do, the easier we will find them to do, 
and the greater satisfaction we will get and also 
give to others. 




SUCCESS 

Part Two. 

" The talent of success is nothing more than doing what 
you can do well, and doing well whatever you do without a 
thought of fame. If it comes at all, it will come because it is 
deserved, not because it is sought after. 5 ' 

— Longfellow. 

" From the lowliest depth there is a path to the loftiest 
height." — Carlyle. 

A really successful life must, without doubt, 
be the result of thorough application to what- 
ever calling one follows; therefore, anything 
which tends to divert attention from the real 
issues, retards success and interferes with in- 
dividual development. As a maxim to be fol- 
lowed with undeviating persistence there are 
few better than "Mind your own business." 
That the world follows this to any marked de- 
gree is not as yet apparent. If people could 
realize how many heartaches, how much sorrow 
and mental distress, could be averted by attend- 
ing strictly to their own business it would not 
take the world long to see the blessings flowing 
from such a method and it would become the 
usual and not the unusual course. 

Concentration of mind is needful for the ac- 
110 



Success m 

complishment of any definite object, but there 
can be no concentration when the individual 
mind is prying into the life of another to find 
something which may tend to belittle or bring 
the condemnation of the world into that other 
life. There are characteristics of the animal 
nature which are not easily overcome in the 
life of man. The cunning of the fox, the in- 
stincts of the jackal and the vulture, are only 
too apparent in what is called Christian civil- 
ization. That which is hardly commendable 
in the animal is infinitely less edifying in man. 
Scandal-mongers, slanderers, and inquisitive 
"busy-bodies" are the prototypes of the lowest 
instincts of the animal race, and are more of a 
menace to the welfare of a community than 
thieves ; for as Shakespeare truly says : 

44 Who steals my purse steals trash: 'tis something, 
nothing; 
But he that filches from me my good name, 
Robs me of that which not enriches him, 
And makes me poor indeed." 

The poisoned and evilly disposed mind that 
makes a business of retailing gossip can not be 
trusted in any emergency ; friendship with such 
a mind loses all its real meaning and of loyalty 
there is none. There may be honor among 
thieves, but there is no honor in the heart of a 
slanderer, and the evolution of such a life must 



I la Dominion and Power 

come through the bitter experiences always 
brought by wilful disobedience to every known 
law of right. Said Buddha: "The words of a 
slanderer are like sand thrown when the wind 
is contrary; they return upon the slanderer 
himself, and a virtuous person can not be 
harmed." 

There are many phases of minding other 
people's business to the detriment of one's own, 
some seemingly very harmless, yet all tending 
to destroy the real usefulness of the offender. 
They who are continually looking for and ex- 
pecting favors from others can not be said to be 
attending strictly to their own business. This 
method may seemingly advance selfish ends, but 
can not bring permanent good because true de- 
velopment comes only through rightly directed 
personal effort. 

Much valuable time is spent in giving advice 
to others that is neither needed nor desired. 
Were the same time spent in living an example 
of superior wisdom it would prove more effective 
than many words of advice. Freedom is essen- 
tial to the highest growth and development of 
the individual ; and it is absolutely necessary, in 
order to be free, to respect the rights of others. 
There need be no selfishness involved in this 
attitude which tends to individualize the life. 
Whenever a demand is made by others, minding 



Success 113 

one's own business does not in any way interfere 
with doing them good. 

Questioning the motives of others, is another 
phase of minding other people's business, and a 
lack of generosity in this respect too often re- 
veals the same underlying motive attributed to 
others, by the self-appointed critic. 

From true individualization will flow the larger 
social life; the ideals of the few, when practically 
applied, eventually become the ideals of the 
many. There is no conflict between real individ- 
ualism and real socialism; they are the two 
halves of one truth. Individual and economic 
freedom must go hand in hand in order to bring 
about a better social condition. 

No individual stands alone. He is an integral 
part of society, and the real law never works for 
the benefit of any one individual to the exclusion 
of all others. The law works to bring about the 
larger good to humanity; thus the individual, in 
turn, enters into the larger life because of the 
good that has come to the many. 

The man, then, who has made the greatest 
success in life, is the one who has been the 
greatest benefactor to the race, is the one who 
receives the love of the many. It is only as he 
has given of himself to the many that the many 
in turn give to him. A man may have an abund- 
ance of this world's goods, but without the love 



H4 Dominion and Power 

and respect of his fellow-man, his life is a barren 
one. It can in no way be considered a success. 
The real riches of life are not made up of mate- 
rial accumulation, but consist in the development 
of all the qualities necessary to the well-being 
of man, and these are the things that in turn 
bring him into touch with his fellow-man, so that 
he is able in a sympathetic way to enter into the 
lives of many, understanding their needs and 
knowing how he can best be useful to them. 

The man who has succeeded in doing this is 
the truly successful man, is the man who will 
never know want — want of love, friendship, or 
respect, or want of any material thing; because 
he has sought and found God's kingdom. Hav- 
ing come into the inner kingdom and being also 
in true relation to the outer kingdom, he has 
not only an abundance within, but that inner 
abundance finds true outer expression. True it 
is he is not weighted down by vast accumula- 
tions bringing with them untold responsibilities, 
for it is well to remember right here that vast 
material wealth brings with it tremendous re- 
sponsibilities, responsibilities that are not always 
recognized, but which, nevertheless, exist, and 
only as they are fulfilled does it become possible 
for the rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
heaven. The kingdom of heaven is a state of 
peace and harmony — peace and harmony in 



Success 115 

one's own mind, and peace and harmony with 
the rest of mankind; and if one is not living up 
to the requirements of life, but shirking its re- 
sponsibilities, there can be no such peace and 
harmony. 

Individual success, then, must never be con- 
sidered apart from its effect upon society. If the 
effect of any given course of action by the in- 
dividual proves beneficial to society, then there 
must be a corresponding benefit or success to 
the individual. So, the wise course for the in- 
dividual to follow in each and all of his under- 
takings is to ask himself two questions : First, 
the larger question, What is going to be the 
effect that I will make upon the lives of people 
with whom I am associated? Second, What is 
going to be the effect of this association upon 
my own life? When he has decided that the 
effect is going to be good upon others the 
second is easy to answer. That which is going 
to prove good to the many, must of necessity be 
good for the individual. In the highest and 
truest sense, real success can never come to 
any one who puts the accomplishment of mere 
personal ends in advance of the greater good he 
might do to the world at large. Real success in 
life is attained through losing sight of the per- 
sonal self and working for the realization of some 
great and good end which will benefit and uplift 



n6 Dominion and Power 

humanity in a physical, or a moral, or an intel- 
lectual way. 

Selfishness is that false quality in man which 
breeds suspicion of other men, and the suspicion 
in the mind of the selfish man will call out sus- 
picion in the minds of others toward him, 
thereby making it the less possible for him to be- 
come really successful. The truly upright man 
can never be selfish. He may desire his own 
good, he may desire an abundance of this world's 
goods, but he will not desire them at the ex- 
pense of others ; for in the pathway to success 
one can never expect to reach the goal through 
the failure of some one else. The world may 
think differently, but the world is not right. The 
man who makes the greatest success is the one 
who is thoroughly mindful of other people's 
interests, realizing that his own good is insepa- 
rably bound with the good coming to others 
with whom he may be associated. He will be 
considerate and fair in all his dealings. He will 
realize that justice and honor are the true basic 
principles for a successful life, and this sense of 
justice and honor in him will appeal to the minds 
of those he is associated with, and will be recog- 
nized, doing away with suspicion or anything 
that could act to the man's detriment. The real 
success of life is not what an individual accom- 
plishes for himself, but the good he has been 



Success 117 

able to bring to others. A life which has been 
devoted to the acquisition of wealth, knowledge, 
or even spiritual development, for a purely per- 
sonal gain, is a life that has been wasted. In 
seeking to find itself it has been lost in the tangle 
of personality. Man may have wealth and be 
successful, if he is using the wealth that has been 
intrusted to his care in a wise and judicious way, 
by helping others to help themselves — not by ac- 
cumulating and hoarding for the sake of accumu- 
lation or any personal end. Man may be success- 
ful in the field of knowledge, but only as he seeks 
to impart some of his own knowledge to those 
less developed than himself, and through the giv- 
ing he receives a still greater store of knowledge. 
One may become successful in life without a 
thoroughly intellectual knowledge of the laws 
of life by being intuitively led into conformity 
to law. Nevertheless, the one who has an intel- 
lectual understanding of law, as well as an 
intuitive perception, is better equipped for a suc- 
cessful life. He then has reason for his inner 
faith. He knows intellectually that discordant, 
inharmonious results come from a violation of 
law, and he is led to ask himself the question as 
to how he has violated it. Getting at the causes 
he is able to adjust himself in a way entirely satis- 
factory to his own mind. This process of re- 
adjustment is most essential. Excessive friction 



n8 Dominion and Power 

and inharmony show a lack of adjustment to 
environment and that a thorough readjustment 
is necessary. Therefore, the great process of 
life is to adjust one's life in accord with law, and 
when changes and new developments come, to 
bring about a readjustment so that through the 
perfect balance of life will come the real joy of 
living. Because, success that does not bring 
with it a joy in life and a joy in doing can not 
be considered real success — at least it is only 
partial. The really successful man is the one 
who delights in his work and who gets a thor- 
ough satisfaction from the many other things in 
the world about him. 

One who would be successful is going to 
profit by understanding the true relation between 
the inner and outer worlds. He is going to see 
that all outer things exist because of inner causes. 
He is going to see that his own product, be it 
what it may in the world, is an expression of his 
own mind and thought, and in order to have 
that expression perfect and harmonious without, 
first of all, his own mind and thought that gen- 
erate it must be harmonious. By doing away 
with friction in the inner he avoids friction in the 
outer. Thus he consciously works from cause 
to effect. 

The real elements of success are not so much 
in one's environment as in one's own mind, A 



Success 119 

man must look there, then, for the real cause of 
success in life, and not to chance, luck, environ- 
ment, or any external thing. 

To sum up, the elements of success might be 
enumerated as follows : a study of the inner law 
of life, and a study of the expression of that law 
in the outer world. The results flowing from 
such knowledge would be integrity, honor, clear 
insight, courage, perseverance, concentration of 
mind, and, over and above all, the great soul- 
qualities, faith, hope, and love, that can not be 
pictured by mind nor expressed by words, but 
which all may feel and all may give expression 
to if they will to do so. For they are latent as 
living force and power in the lives of all men: 
faith in God, faith in the power given us which 
comes from God, faith in our fellow-men, faith, 
in fact, that everything is working together for 
our good, and the good of all; hope that will 
fill the mind with brightness, that will cause us 
to turn away from the gloom and despondency 
of life, that will bring gladness to our hearts, 
making our very faces radiate with the truest 
joy. Thus, our hope and faith may find abiding 
places in the minds of many. And love that 
perceives God in our very soul, and, knowing of 
God in the inmost, comes in vital touch with 
God in the lives of others ; love so wise and all 
embracing that kindness will flow to every living 



120 Dominion and Power 

and moving thing; love that will tend to bring 
God's kingdom here and now that His will may 
be done on earth even as it is done in heaven. 

The individual who realizes the truth con- 
tained in these things will be the one who is the 
most eminently successful in life, whose life will 
become one unending joy. 




THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES 

" The masculine and feminine elements, exactly equal and 
balancing each other, are as essential to the maintenance of 
the equilibrium of the universe as positive and negative elec- 
tricity or the centripetal and centrifugal forces, the laws of 
attraction which bind together all we know of this planet 
whereon we dwell and of the system in which we revolve." 
— Elizabeth Cady Stanton. 

11 The inequality of the sexes in the human race is a disas- 
trous anomaly in creation due to the artificial barriers against 
the full and free development of woman's moral and mental 

P° wers '" -Emily P. Collins. 

No one can dispute the fact that the position 
of woman has changed very decidedly in the 
English-speaking countries of the world, in the 
past twenty-five years. While many will declare 
that she has gained materially in all things 
which go toward a more advanced civilization 
there are others who look upon the changes 
with disfavor, not to say antagonism, unfavor- 
able opinions coming at times from quarters 
least expected. Nikola Tesla, in a recent article 
in The Century, deplores the condition arising 
from the new order of things : 

" Society life, modern education and pursuits 
of women, tending to draw them away from their 
household duties and make men out of them, 
121 



122 Dominion and Power 

must needs detract from the elevating ideal they 
represent, diminish the artistic creative power, 
and cause sterility and a general weakening of 
the race." 

It is singular how advanced a mind may be 
in one direction and how behind the times in 
another. The statement made by Tesla in his 
otherwise remarkable article seems born of a 
prejudice coming from the belief in man's supe- 
riority over woman. Notwithstanding my great 
admiration for the writer, I must say this state- 
ment is weak in the extreme, if not absolutely 
false. One naturally expects a judicial utterance 
from a scientific mind that is supposed to weigh 
the evidence in the case. In viewing any sub- 
ject from an impartial standpoint one must look 
beyond the present conditions and consider the 
case in all its bearings. 

Suppose great wrong and injustice are found; 
in the righting of those wrongs, in abolishing 
the injustice, there must inevitably follow a cer- 
tain amount of friction and discord until society 
has readjusted itself to the new conditions. And 
the more complex the wrongs the greater will 
be the temporary disturbance of social condi- 
tions; but the final outcome is no less sure and 
no less to be desired. The onlooker who sees 
nothing except that which has taken place on 
the surface, and compares that with previous 



The Equality of the Sexes 123 

conditions, may find apparent reason for believ- 
ing the old order of things better than the 
new. 

But should the social friction of a generation 
be allowed to stand in the way when we are try- 
ing to work out the highest welfare of the human 
race? In the larger freedom which has come to 
woman there can be nothing which in the end 
will prove in any way detrimental to the well- 
being of the race. The highest development on 
any plane of life, is attained only when there is 
perfect freedom. Resistance offered to freedom 
of natural thought and action in the life of man, 
hinders and dwarfs growth and brings about ab- 
normal conditions of mind and body. And that 
which in any way retards the highest develop- 
ment of woman, interferes to exactly the same 
degree with the natural growth and develop- 
ment of the other sex. The sinner and the one 
sinned against are both made to suffer, because 
of the violation of the law of growth. 

The conservative mind considers any innova- 
tion which sets aside the old order of things, as 
being contrary to the law of orderly progression; 
but if the opinions of the conservative mind 
were considered as final there would be neither 
growth nor development, simply stagnation. 

Let us point out a few instances in which tne 
new order of things is preferable to the old, and 



124 Dominion and Power 

which will in the end prove beneficial to men 
and women alike. Not only this, but it will 
have a very decided effect on the generations to 
come. Just a word as to former conditions and 
the belief still retained in the lives of many. 

The Bible student will quote the Apostle Paul 
to make good the old order; the scientific mind 
will dwell on the physical limitations and put 
forward the thought that the principal office of 
woman is the reproduction of the race; while 
the mind that is neither biblical nor scientific 
will try to show that there have been but few 
great women in original or creative thought in 
the world and therefore a great woman is an ab- 
normal production of Nature. All this is on a 
par with nine-tenths of the reasoning that is now 
in vogue in opposition to the continued advance- 
ment and freedom of woman. But these argu- 
ments, and a thousand more like them, would 
not be sufficient to justify the slavery of woman 
from time immemorial to the present, for we can 
not in all truth and candor say that woman has 
been, or is, free. While we grant a greater de- 
gree of freedom has come to her we still contend 
that nothing short of absolute equality of the 
sexes will fulfil the eternal law of right. 

When men pride themselves on intellectual 
development do they realize that a development 
of heart is quite as important as development of 



The Equality of the Sexes 125 

head? Is not he who has developed both head 
and heart a more complete man than the one 
who has developed only the intellect? And if 
this is true of a man is it not equally true of a 
woman ? It would be true of woman to-day if 
the advantages so freely given to the men had 
not been withheld from her. In spite of opposi- 
tion and all the disadvantages women labor 
under they are insisting on rights and privileges 
denied them in the past. 

It is pitiful to see the lack of manliness ex- 
hibited by men in conceding to women educa- 
tional privileges in common with themselves. 
Only a short time ago one of our denomina- 
tional universities, which had previously granted 
certain educational advantages to women, cur- 
tailed these advantages at the behest of the 
male students who did not care to have their 
sisters take rank as high as themselves. No 
fault was found, or could be found, with the 
standard of scholarship. In fact, when both 
sexes come together and equal chances are 
given to both, women acquire and assimilate 
knowledge quite as readily as do men. That 
the faculty of a great college should give way 
to the prejudices of a lot of undeveloped, con- 
ceited young men, shows both mental and moral 
weakness; but how can one expect better 
results when boys see their fathers dictate to 



126 Dominion and Power 

their mothers as to what they shall and shall 
not do ? 

In the higher freedom of life there will be no 
dictation either on the part of men or women, 
there will be that perfect co-operation which will 
make for the harmony of the whole life. There 
is but one law for male and female, and both 
must be judged by that law. A woman, spir- 
itually, mentally, and physically, in the common 
order of things, will be the equal of the man. 
She is not the equal of man now, because she is 
surrounded by many and grievous limitations 
which make equality impossible. Many of these 
limitations have been set by man; some are of 
her own making. But she is beginning to re- 
alize that independence of thought and inde- 
pendence of action are indispensable to her 
happiness and well-being. She is also showing 
in many and varied ways her ability to compete 
successfully with man in spite of the injustices 
done her by the refusal on the part of her em- 
ployers to pay her equal wages. In a study of 
the history of the nations we find those that 
have become the most highly civilized have had 
the greatest personal liberty. 

But a few months since, Japan threw open its 
doors of higher education to women, claiming 
that the nations which hold their women in sub- 
jection and deny them the educational advan- 



The Equality of the Sexes 127 

tages granted their men, become weak and 
powerless, citing Turkey, and other eastern 
countries, as proof of the statement. 

The well-being of the race can only become 
an accomplished fact when men and women are 
able to enter into and appreciate one another's 
thoughts and feelings. The readjustments which 
have taken place, are bringing to man the truer 
development of his inmost feelings, and to 
woman is coming that which has been denied 
her so long: the capacity to think as clearly and 
reason as logically as man. These two condi- 
tions are the essentials of perfect equality. 

Men have often wondered why women have 
been so harsh in their judgment and condemna- 
tion of one of their own sex who leaves the path 
of virtue, and also why they so easily forgive 
men who have violated every code of morality. 
Without going into an exhaustive analysis of 
the different causes of this attitude, two seem to 
stand pre-eminent: First, because of her higher 
intuitive development, woman realizes to a fuller 
degree than does man the innate purity of the 
inner life, and the ideal relationship which should 
exist between man and woman. Anything which 
does violence to that ideal shocks her finer 
sensibilities. In the second instance man's 
thought of possession — and this attitude held to 
through the ages — and that woman should keep 



128 Dominion and Power 

her life pure and spotless, has acted on the mind 
of woman in the nature of a suggestion. 

If this suggestion had been an unselfish one, 
doubtless it would have been of untold benefit to 
her, but because it was rooted and grounded in 
selfishness it resulted in a standard of judgment 
wherein the good became perverted by a lack of 
charity and an unforgiving spirit. The standard 
of judgment she formed for her own sex is not 
applied impartially to the other sex. Again, 
suggestion is responsible for this other stand- 
ard. Man's belief in his own superiority, and 
his independence and selfishness in consulting 
his own pleasures and personal desires, tended 
to establish a condition of mind that might be 
summed up by the saying, "The king can do no 
wrong." This condition of mind would change 
of necessity when woman brought reason and 
logic to bear on the subject. She would cer- 
tainly deal as impartially with one sex as the 
other. She would recognize the one law as 
applying to both. 

It is a well-known fact that only as different 
parts of the body are used are they strength- 
ened, and if any part is left in idleness it be- 
comes only a question of time when weakness 
ensues. That which is true of the body is 
equally true of the mind. Only as every mental 
faculty is used in a rightful way, does that 



The Equality of the Sexes 129 

faculty become strengthened and perfected. In 
the past, women have not used their mental 
faculties to any marked degree, but have ac- 
cepted their thoughts and opinions ready-made 
from the lords of creation. How could woman 
show forth her innate greatness when debarred 
from creative thought-action? Could any body 
of men ever become great who lived simply in 
thoughts and ideas of others? Latent talents 
and possibilities only disclose themselves when 
each faculty is used to the extent of its present 
capacity. The race, without doubt, has been 
greatly retarded in its development because of 
the failure to see the necessity for the intellec- 
tual development of woman. Let us trace the 
good which will result from the higher develop- 
ment of woman. 

It strengthens the mind to think and reason 
for one's self, and it brings greater self-reliance 
and greater independence of thought and action; 
and these tend also to free the mind from super- 
stitious fears which produce harmful effects to 
both mind and body. The many and varied 
positions now filled by women require so much 
greater activity than has ever been needed in 
her employment in the past, that the supply of 
human energy is thereby vastly increased, and 
strength, not weakness, is the result. We do 
not as yet see fully how great a factor it will 



130 Dominion and Power 

prove in human development, because attention 
is centered rather on the change and the more 
external side of the question. 

Many people are asking whether the new 
order of things is not going to play havoc with 
the domestic relations and home life; whether 
the rearing and caring for children will not be 
seriously endangered. It is also contended by 
some that the mingling of men and women on 
an equal footing, as students and bread-winners, 
takes away from womanly refinement and deli- 
cacy of feeling, and blunts her intuition and 
finer sensibilities. Another question might be 
asked which would offset this : How much more 
will man profit through such contact ? Would 
not the gain to humanity as a whole be greater 
than the loss? 

The prophets of evil will find before many 
years that they have made many miscalcula- 
tions; that the very things which they proph- 
esied would bring evil to the race have really 
conferred the greatest benefits ; that with the 
development of the intellectual side of woman, 
she is better fitted to rear and care for a 
family ; that she is able to impart knowledge to 
her children which she has gained by her indi- 
vidual efforts and experience. Instead of accept- 
ing St. Paul's advice, when he said that if a 
woman would know anything let her ask her 



The Equality of the Sexes 131 

husband, she will be able to speak out of the 
fulness of her own mental experience, wherein 
she has thought out as carefully and as logically 
the many problems of existence as has her 
brother man. 

At the present, men do not lay marked stress 
upon the power of woman to think and reason, 
claiming that she is moved solely by her emo- 
tions, and jumps to conclusions. But with a 
greater development of her intellect will come 
also a far higher respect for her feelings, and a 
decided gain will come to mankind through the 
recognition of the fact that it takes both thought 
and feeling to perfect the life. The truer devel- 
opment of man will come when this so-called 
womanly quality of feeling has much greater 
scope in his life than now. 

It would be possible to go on indefinitely 
enumerating the advantages which would flow 
from a new womanhood wherein quite as much 
benefit would come to man as to woman. A 
perfect equality between man and woman should 
be the watchword of the day, and the one who 
succeeds in doing anything to further the cause 
becomes a benefactor to humanity. It is with 
gladness that the awakened soul should herald 
the morning of the new day in which is pro- 
claimed for both sexes liberty, equality, and 
fraternity. 



MARRIAGE 

;5 Marriage-making for the earth, 
With gold so much,— birth, power, repute so much, 
Or beauty, youth so much, in lack of these ! 
Be as the angels rather, who, apart, 
Know themselves into one, are found at length 
Married, but marry never, no, nor give 
In marriage; they are man and wife at once 
When the true time is: here we have to wait 
Not so long neither ! Could we by a wish 
Have what we will and get the future now, 
Would we wish aught done undone in the past? 
So, let him wait God's instant men call years; 
Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul 
Do out the duty ! Through such souls alone 
God stooping shows sufficient of His light 
For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise." 

— Browning. 

*' Just as true marriage is the highest blessedness that can 
come to man or woman, so a false marriage, a marriage con- 
ceived in vanity or avarice or sensuality, is the most fearful 
calamity. The binding of two loveless, selfish hearts together 
can only result in mutual misery. The resulting state is not 
simply hell, as it is frequently called. It is that more painful, 
but at the same time more hopeful condition, which in figur- 
ative language we may describe as the compelling of persons 
who are fit only for hell to dwell perpetually in heaven. It is 
a condition which calls for the expression of the most tender 
and unselfish love at every point of constant contact, imposed 
upon persons who have no love to give. The supreme bless- 
edness of the ideal marriage measures by contrast the superla- 
tive wretchedness of a loveless union, ******* 

132 






Marriage 133 

* * * The modern man brings to his wife a wide range 
of business sagacity, political influence, scientific and specula- 
tive interests. The modern woman brings to her husband 
rich acquisitions in literary and aesthetic taste, social life and 
philanthropic ard religious fervour. Each life is reinforced 
and multiplied by ail that is in the other; and thus both enter 
through the portals of the family into the life of the Universal 
Spirit, of which at best only vague and shadowy glimpses 
came to them in the blindness of their individualistic isola- 

tlon '" — Wm. De Witt Hyde. 

"But from the beginning of the creation God made them 
male and female. 

"For this reason shall a man leave his father and mother 
and cleave to his wife, 

"And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no 
more twain, but one flesh." m Mark X- 6 7 8 

"For this reason will a man leave his father 
and mother and cleave to his wife." 

The mystery of marriage is in the twain be- 
coming one. If we go back to the allegorical 
story of creation, we find there this statement: 

" Let us make man in our image, after our 
likeness. ... So God created man in His 
own image; in the image of God created He 
him ; male and female created He them." 

The remarkable part of this statement is the 
introduction of unity and duality both in refer- 
ence to God and man. The Hebrews believed 
in God as being one. The world has never had 
a purer monotheism than that held to by this 
people; and yet in this first chapter of their 



134 Dominion and Power 

sacred books is found a declaration of unity, 
duality, and trinity. 

To satisfy the mind of the biblical student let 
us make a careful examination and see whether 
the foregoing statement is borne out by the 
actual facts in the case, taking the thought of 
unity, first: "So God created man in His own 
image; in the image of God created He him." 
The thought of duality is as directly brought 
out in, " Let us make man in our own image." 
Those who declare for the fatherhood of God 
should not fail to perceive that the motherhood 
is just as clearly set forth. The trinity is affirmed 
in the statement of the Father-Mother God 
creating man in His own image and likeness, so 
far the Father-Mother begetting the child which 
is the third principle of the Godhead. That 
which is true of God is also true of man, and 
must of necessity be so in order that man should 
show forth the perfect image and likeness of 
God. Careful reading will make it plain that 
God is a unit as regards animating life and con- 
trolling intelligence. 

Again, I wish to impress you with the fact 
that in this spiritual creation of man, which is 
really the foreshadowing of the physical crea- 
tion, there is no separation between the male 
and the female. This is the spiritual creation, 
God's ideal of Himself, involved in the soul of 



Marriage 135 

man, the child of God. When we come to the 
allegorical third chapter of Genesis, we find 
another statement of man's creation. Here we 
have the physical creation, and at this point we 
have the differentiation of the male and the 
female. It is as though the soul had become 
divided, each part having a separate life or ex- 
istence of its own. 

In times past it has been thought by some 
very wise men that each sex had the possibili- 
ties of both, potentially, and that in the process 
of development, each soul would unfold to the 
fulness of the Godhead, or disclose the perfect 
image and likeness which was involved in the 
beginning; that men and women were not in 
reality complementary one to the other. 

Balzac in his wonderfully beautiful story of 
"Seraphita," brings out the thought of a man 
and woman of very high spiritual development 
begetting a child, the parents passing away on the 
ninth anniversary of the child's birth. The great 
central idea is that the souls of the father and 
mother unite in the life of the child, and when 
the child has grown to maturity, men fall in love 
with the feminine nature, and women fall in love 
with the masculine nature, but the united soul 
has need of neither. The idea as thus set forth, 
is worthy of serious consideration; in fact, the 
union, or marriage, of soul with soul is one that 



136 Dominion and Power 

should command far geater attention than it does 
command at the present time. Marriage, without 
doubt, is the greatest event in this earthly life of 
man or woman ; it is a sacrament fraught with 
happiness, with all that is highest and noblest in 
life; or it is a base counterfeit wherein sorrow 
and degradation usurp the place of the highest 
and holiest emotions. 

A thousand other questions of far less import- 
ance occupy the minds of the people, but this 
question which is of the most vital importance 
to man's well-being, is kept in the background. 
Children are brought up so woefully ignorant 
that they have no conception of what awaits 
them in the married life. The whole subject of 
the relation between man and woman is tabooed; 
it is as though people were ashamed to think 
or give expression in words to things, which, 
although sacred, nevertheless should be thor- 
oughly understood. 

In this question, as in every other, we must 
take into consideration the three planes of de- 
velopment, and that marriage differs, in a sense, 
on each plane. 

On the physical plane there is little besides 
the desire for reproduction, and the purely sensu- 
ous desires; and if nature's laws are observed, 
comparative peace and happiness are the result. 
The requirements of the physical plane are so 



Marriage 137 

limited that there is less liability to mental fric- 
tion and discord than on the intellectual plane, 
where there is greater diversity of thought. 
Two souls uniting on this higher plane, having 
the same desires and aspirations, should blend 
harmoniously together, but too often the aspira- 
tions and desires are so wide apart that there is 
no oneness of thought or purpose, and there is 
failure to understand each other. We find on 
this plane far more unhappy marriages than on 
the physical and spiritual planes; one reason 
being, that on the physical there is a purely 
physical basis for marriage, and on the spiritual 
plane there is a purely spiritual basis, while on 
the intellectual plane a hundred things may act 
as controlling influences to marriage. Man here 
is torn by many and conflicting desires — social 
ambition, ambition influenced by wealth, intel- 
lectual greatness, distinction in any part in life, 
and other considerations without number. 

It makes little difference how much two people 
may desire to do right, if they are not at one in 
heart and mind they can not enter into sympa- 
thetic relations, they can not become mutually 
helpful. Failure to understand each other be- 
gets a discordant mental state, which, instead of 
being lessened, is increased as time goes on. 

All spiritual marriage has God as its founda- 
tion, that is, has love as its basis. Here, as on 



138 Dominion and Power 

the physical plane, there is only one basis for 
marriage. The marriages on the two planes be- 
low are the unions for time. Spiritual marriages 
are the marriages for eternity. For two souls 
uniting and blending as one through the power 
of love, there can be no separation, either in time 
or eternity. Whom God hath joined together, 
no man can put asunder. They were created 
one in the beginning; there is no chance or hap- 
hazard in God's plan. There is a spiritual affinity 
between the soul of man and the soul of woman. 
Only one thing will disclose this affinity — the 
power of pure and unselfish love in the souls of 
both. No animal desire, no earthly considera- 
tion ; love and love alone — love that thinketh no 
evil, love that sufifereth long and is kind, love 
that flows from the soul of the universe into the 
soul of man, this is the undying factor in all real 
marriage. Man may not annul this or set it 
aside, and all that man can do through rite or 
ceremonial shall not add to it. 

The question may arise in many minds as to 
whether union on the first two planes constitutes 
real marriage. Under certain circumstances, and 
with certain limitations, the answer would be in 
the affirmative. The circumstance which would 
tend to real marriage would be the harmonious 
conditions— the ability resulting from the union 
to understand each other, the desires and aspira- 



Marriage *39 

tions in common whereby they could enter into 
each other's lives. The limitation would come 
from failure to discern the higher law, from the 
lack of spiritual development, and from placing 
hopes and desires in externals, so that there 
would be little influx from the love-nature 
which tends to unify and free the lives of both 
from worldly selfishness. Such marriage, how- 
ever, may find perfect fulfilment and continua- 
tion in time and eternity. 

Sorrow and unhappiness might be avoided to 
a very marked degree in the marriage relation 
upon the lower planes of development if har- 
mony were made one of the chief considerations 
of the union, and all selfish considerations, in so 
far as it were possible, kept in the background- 
Two people thoroughly harmonious before mar- 
riage would be quite likely to remain so after, 
but there is little prospect, where lack of har- 
mony exists before the union, that it should 
develop afterward. 

Parents make very grievous mistakes when 
they are thoughtful regarding worldly advan- 
tages and thoughtless about the advantages 
which would make their children really happy. 
Their own experience should show them the 
better way. No real marriage can have for its 
foundation lust, the desire for social position, 
money, or any worldly acquisition. God never 



140 Dominion and Power 

sanctions such marriages, neither has He dele- 
gated His authority to man to make such 
unions sacred. Marriage is sacred only when it 
is whole, complete. Man's law may sanction 
and uphold, but sorrow, shame, and degradation 
must be the end of all such unholy marriages. 

Throughout the universe harmony is the key- 
note of obedience to law, and where there is no 
harmony there can be no conformity to law. 
Many people who believe themselves to be in 
accord with the law of God would continue to 
perpetuate these unholy alliances by saying: 
"Whom God hath joined together, let no man 
put asunder." Contending for the sacredness of 
the marriage rite, they violate such sacredness 
by prolonging a condition which is absolutely 
untenable and contrary to the law of the uni- 
verse. All other mistakes in life we are told to 
correct, to substitute a true condition for a false 
one ; but no matter how great the mistake two 
persons make in marrying, such a mistake, the 
divinely appointed say, must not and shall not 
be corrected. 

Thus do men set at naught the laws of God, 
making of marriage a mockery, a delusion, and 
a snare. There are degrees of love on every 
plane, because God is made manifest on every 
plane. Then let love and harmony, as under- 
stood on the varying planes of existence, be the 



Marriage 141 

God-uniting power that shall link man and 
woman in the oneness of life. Such unions will 
result in happy homes, and children, seeing and 
feeling the harmony and love of father and 
mother, will greatly profit by their example. 
The world to-day is demanding the solution of 
this mystery ; it can not be set aside, no matter 
how much the ultra-conservative religionists may 
desire it. Their efforts to set aside will only 
cause the pendulum to swing far in the other 
direction where extreme radicalism may result 
in licentiousness, or conditions more unrighteous 
and contrary to law and order than the unholy 
marriages of the present. 

No problem ever presents itself to man with- 
out a way of solving it. The solution of this 
one, however, will be found not in the do- 
nothing attitude, or in saying, " Let well enough 
alone," but through a strong desire to know 
God's law in relation to it, and through knowing 
how to bring the life into conformity with it. 
Let us study God's revealed will, because this 
will is revealed to* a far greater extent, even at 
the present, than most people think or care to 
know. When we realize the truth about the 
real meaning of marriage and all that it stands 
for, its sacred import and the joy and peace it 
brings when consummated in accord with divine 
law, the question will no longer be asked: "Is 



142 



Dominion and Power 



marriage a failure?" because marriage will be 
known as it truly is — the crowning act of life, 
wherein two souls unite and become one, wherein 
love and wisdom join hands; the at-one-ment 
wherein the soul becomes one with the universal 
soul. 




THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN 

" It is no little thing, when a fresh soul 
And a fresh heart, with their unmeasured scope 
For good, not gravitating earthward yet, 
But circling in diviner periods, 
Are sent into the world. 

******** 
•'Children are God's apostles, day by day 
Sent forth to preach of love, and hope, and peace." 
— James Russell Lowell. 

"All heaven, in every baby born, 
All absolute of earthly leaven, 
Reveals itself, tho' man may scorn 
Ail heaven. 

'• Yet man might feel all sin forgiven, 
All grief appeased, all pain outworn, 
By this one revelation given. 

"Soul, now forget thy burdens borne; 
Heart, be thy joys now seven times seven: 
Love shows in light more bright than morn 

All heaven." -Swinburne. 

" Give him his liberty, and keep his confidence. Let him 
choose his course; but be so good and close a friend that he 
will not think of making an important choice without asking 
your advice. Spend much time with him; talk much with 
him: but talk about his little interests, not your grand ideas. 
Never evade an honest question, or put off a legitimate curios- 
ity. Make sure that his first intimations of the significance 
of sex are suffused with an atmosphere of reverence for its 
sacredness. Never weary of the interminable prattle about 

143 



144 Dominion and Power 

his exploits in play, the characteristics of playmates, the hard- 
ships of school, the mechanism of locomotives, the aspirations 
to become an engineer, a stage-driver, or a soldier. Un- 
doubtedly this union of perfect liberty with perfect confidence 
is rather an expensive process in the time, patience, and sym- 
pathy of the parents ; but the reward is great and to be had 
with certainty on no cheaper terms. It is the one way to 
insure in the child a character which is at the same time 
strong and good." __ Wm De Wjtt Ryde 

Many volumes have been written concerning 
the duties of children to their parents, but very- 
little has been said of the duties of parents 
to their children. A careful and thoughtful 
analysis of the whole question would show that 
parents are debtors to their children for more 
than has generally been supposed. Let parents 
once realize how much more there is in life be- 
cause of their children, how child-life tends to 
call out the better side of their natures, how 
much happiness comes to them through their 
children, and how much the example of a child's 
life means, and they will know for a very truth 
that the trouble of rearing children is more than 
offset by the blessings which they bring. The 
trustfulness and faith of the child-nature, the 
optimism which enjoys the present, forgetful of 
the past, careless of the future, is a necessary 
example for parents, who have lost sight of some 
of the vital conditions of well-being. Truly, the 
kingdom of God lies all about within and with- 



The Rights of Children 145 

out the life of a child. A valuable lesson may- 
be learned in the natural way in which children 
think and act, as well as in their true democ- 
racy, where race, creed, color, or previous con- 
ditions play no part. Whether the lesson be 
heeded or not, the influence of children for good 
is of untold value. 

Prenatal conditions must be taken into con- 
sideration when we approach the subject of the 
rights of children. A thoroughly harmonious 
marriage, in which there is freedom of thought 
and action on the part of both father and mother, 
is the first requisite for the true recognition of 
child-rights, and the only firm foundation on 
which to establish the rights of children. The 
ancient Greeks, understanding the value of 
prenatal influence far more than the people of 
the present, surrounded their wives with the 
most harmonious and beautiful conditions. Many 
lessons might be learned from their customs 
tending to raise the standard of moral and physi- 
cal well-being. 

Marriage and the bringing of a child into the 
world are the two most sacred mysteries of life, 
and are fraught with greater importance than 
all other events, and if thought and care are 
necessary in any phase of life, surely they are 
demanded here. 

Parents need not expect harmonious children 



146 Dominion and Poiver 

if they are inharmonious themselves; neither 
need they expect strong, healthy children if their 
minds are discordant; because their mental dis- 
cord acting upon the life of the child will pro- 
duce mental and physical disturbances. Up to 
a certain stage in the development of the child, 
the minds of the parents act upon him in such 
a way that he reflects their varying thoughts 
and emotions, and is in no way responsible in 
his own little life for any mental discord or 
physical disturbances. As yet, most parents do 
not realize the truth of this, but when they do 
they will understand that they are responsible to 
the very fullest degree for their children's health. 

There is a new life coming for mankind — one 
wherein the vital questions will be thought out 
and worked out as they never have been before; 
one wherein a knowledge of the inner life and 
its laws will give to us the key to the gate which 
leads to health and happiness. The old order of 
things is passing away, and a new order has 
come, or is near at hand, wherein man will real- 
ize that he has dominion and power, not alone 
in the external world, but dominion and power 
over his own thoughts, his own actions, and the 
power to control and direct the full force of his 
own life. 

A shock may come to those who are dwelling 
continually on the wisdom and justice of God's 



The Rights of Children 147 

plan when they think of little children having 
to suffer for the wrong-doing of their parents. 
They may question such wisdom and such jus- 
tice, but after all this condition only goes to 
prove that humanity is one, that we are parts 
one of another, that if one part suffers all suffer 
to some degree. It goes still further to show 
that if humanity is one body, happiness, health, 
and strength are not only for every part, but for 
the whole ; that there is no real salvation for the 
whole if any part of the whole is excepted. The 
law that saves the part is the law that saves the 
whole. 

In the care and bringing up of children, in the 
present, the greater responsibility rests with the 
mother; but there is neither right nor justice 
in this. If perfect equality existed between hus- 
band and wife the responsibility would be shared 
equally. As it is the greater burden of the care 
of children is placed on the mother, while the 
advantages necessary to the intelligent bringing 
up of children are denied her. The superficial 
mind may say that it rests with the mother to 
rear the child, and with the father to provide 
for the material wants ; and when they do this 
that they are fulfilling the natural requirements 
of life. But if the mother is going to rear the 
child in the way he should go, then the more 
highly she is developed spiritually, intellectually, 



148 Dominion and Power 

and physically, the more efficient she becomes 
in the care of both mind and body. It is not 
enough that the father should provide for the 
physical sustenance of the child. Some fathers 
excuse themselves by saying that having worked 
hard all day, when the evening comes, they need 
rest. 

Max O'Rell relates the following incident: 
" Some years ago I was spending Sunday after- 
noon in a house of a young married man in 
Chicago, who, I was told, possessed twenty mil- 
lions. The poor fellow! It was the twenty 
millions which possessed him. He had a most 
beautiful and interesting wife, and the loveliest 
little girl of three or four years of age that I ever 
set my eyes on. That lovely little girl was kind 
enough to take to me at once — there's no ac- 
counting for taste. We had a little flirtation in 
the distance at first. By and by she came toward 
me, nearer and nearer, then she stopped in front 
of me, and looked at me, hesitating, with her 
finger in her pretty little mouth. I knew what 
she wanted, and I said to her: 'That's all right, 
come on.' She jumped on my knees, settled 
herself comfortably and asked me to tell her 
stories. I started at once. Now, you under- 
stand I was not allowed to stop; but I took 
breath, and I said to her : ' Does not your papa 
tell you long stories on Sundays ? ' That lovely 



The Rights of Children 149 

little round face grew sad and quite long. 'Oh, 
no!' she said, 'papa is too tired on Sundays.' " 

If parents only knew it they could get far 
greater rest and more valuable knowledge from 
entering into child-life than in almost any other 
way. It is not sitting or lying down that rests 
one, but the power to change thought from one 
thing to something entirely different, and enter- 
ing into the child-life would give both rest and 
recreation. It would tend to renew youth and 
in every way prove beneficial to father and child. 
It would be of untold assistance to the mother, 
who has been engaged throughout the day with 
the care of the children. It would introduce a 
new element into the life of the child, and chil- 
dren require change of thought quite as much as 
do older people. The monotony experienced by 
older people is also experienced by children. 

These thoughts are advanced by way of sug- 
gestion and fathers will find them worthy of con- 
sideration. 

Having mentioned certain rights of children 
which should be considered previous to birth, 
let us now consider their rights after being born 
into the world. A few words on the question 
of the temperaments of parents will be timely. 
It may be said that temperament is a matter of 
heredity, but being born into this world with a 
certain temperament, the power is given to 



150 Dominion and Power 

change it. A morbid, gloomy temperament 
may be made bright and hopeful, and the anx- 
ious, worrying temperament may become the 
peaceful, restful one. No matter what mental 
condition is brought into the world, it can be 
changed, modified, or eradicated. Children will 
thrive best where there is a spirit of hopeful- 
ness, where the mental sunshine of fearlessness, 
brightness, and gladness is diffused about them. 

Parents should always be patient with chil- 
dren, remembering that the understanding of a 
child is only developed to a limited degree, and 
through being patient in showing the right 
course of thought and action, more can be ac- 
complished than by manifesting a spirit of im- 
patience. 

Children should never be told that there are 
two ways of doing things ; the right way only 
should be pointed out. Try to teach the child 
that there is only one way in life and one way 
to do everything, and it will make the child's 
mind more harmonious and the life much easier 
to live. 

Parents owe it to their children never to do 
anything that will cause them to be fearful; 
never to threaten them with punishment for 
wrong-doing, but, so far as it is possible, keep 
their little minds filled with courage, brightness, 
kindness, gentleness, straightforwardness, polite- 



The Rights of Children 151 

ness, and truthfulness. Parents should always 
think of their children as they would have them 
be and do. By keeping this uppermost in their 
minds, they will find that the life of the child 
will shape itself according to their highest ideal. 
What they think and see in their own minds 
concerning their children, if held to in a strong, 
steadfast way, will sooner or later be beautifully 
expressed in the life of the child. 

Punishment meted out to children for their 
wrong-doing is seldom or never merited — if 
punishment ever can be said to be merited. The 
child is acting out more the life of those about 
him than his own. The worry, the anger, or 
the fretfulness, is occasioned more by conditions 
thrown about the child than by anything 
wrought out by the child. If the punishment 
were meted out according to the true deserts, 
more often would it go to the parents. Punish- 
ment does not make children better, but serves 
to call out a certain sense of resentment, and 
when parents punish their children, they, them- 
selves, become instrumental in the introduction 
of a false element in the life of the child. 

Parents should teach their children how to 
think and reason for themselves. When a child 
is told to do a thing and asks the father or 
mother the reason for it, that reason should 
never be denied. It is not sufficient to say, "I 



152 Dominion and Power 

told you to." Such an example, if carried out, 
will be copied by the child, and in after life will 
show forth as a disagreeable trait of character. 
The child has a right to the reason for anything 
he is asked to do. 

Parents should be reasonable and consistent 
in their dealings with their children. Children 
should not be told that they can do a thing to- 
day and have the same thing refused them on 
the morrow with neither rhyme nor reason. In 
fact it is better to deal with children in as reason- 
able and as straightforward a way as one would 
with adults. Make everything very simple and 
very clear. 

Respect the rights of children, and when 
grown up they will respect the rights of others. 
Children are influenced to a marked degree by 
the example presented to them by their elders. 
Give them the very best of examples, Make it 
easy for them to be obedient and truthful; make 
it easy for them to be loving and kind, by being 
all these yourself. What you are in a thor- 
oughly consistent way, that also they will be- 
come. 



TEMPTATION AS A MEANS OF 
GROWTH 

44 Temptations and trials, without and within, 

From the pathway of virtue the spirit may lure; 

But the soul shall grow strong in its triumphs o'er sin, 

And the heart shall preserve its integrity pure." 

— W. H. Burleigh. 

" God is better served in resisting a temptation to evil 
than in many formal prayers." 

— William Penn. 

" Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us 
from evil." 

Whether or not the Master ever used the 
words, " Lead us not into temptation," the fact 
stands pre-eminent that temptation as a means 
of growth is necessary in the life of man. 

We are told that Jesus was tempted and tried 
like as we are, and it would seem that such 
temptation had for its purpose the perfecting of 
his own life, as well as the presenting of an ideal 
which would prove helpful to all who would 
follow in his footsteps. The sin does not con- 
sist in one's being tempted, but in entertaining 
the temptation and allowing it to fasten itself in 
one's mind until at last it finds expression in 
word or act. 

The above passage, from the Lord's Prayer, 

153 



154 Dominion and Power 

would convey to the mind the thought of God 
as tempting or leading us into temptation, while 
in the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness the 
devil or adversary was the one that tempted. 
We are also told in the Scriptures not to say we 
are tempted of God, for God tempts no man. 
No matter how the passage may read, we are 
led to believe that the thought would be better 
expressed, "Leave us not in temptation" — that 
is, in our hour of trial, God's spirit be with us, 
causing us to rise above trial and temptation, 
delivering us from the evil of wrong-doing. 

Throughout life we are encompassed by temp- 
tation, so that there is no time when we are not 
obliged to choose between a lesser and a greater 
good. As we meet and overcome each tempta- 
tion in life we are strengthened ; each temptation 
put under foot brings with it the ability to meet 
and overcome still greater things. Temptation 
is rooted in selfishness and there is no tempta- 
tion apart from it. By overcoming the personal 
self and rising into the universal Self-hood, we 
are freed from its influence. It is not the spirit 
of God that tempts us, but it is the carnal mind, 
the mind of the world. The spirit of God is 
with us to lead us out of the temptation. 

On all planes of consciousness temptation is 
active, but it is more subtle on the higher planes. 
On the physical plane the appeal comes to man 



Temptation as a Means of Growth 155 

through his sense-nature — the things that are 
pleasing to the eye and the things that are good 
for food. All these are good in their relative 
places, but when a universal good is subordi- 
nated to a selfish end, the wilful perversion be- 
comes a source of evil. 

It must not be understood that the sense- 
nature of man is evil in itself; the senses are not 
the arbiters of one's actions, but convey to the 
mind reports of objective phenomena. The mind 
acting on these impressions received, determines 
the course to be followed, be it beneficial or 
otherwise. Temptations on the lower plane can 
be clearly defined, having to do solely with 
things of a purely physical nature; and with 
temperance and moderation — refraining from 
excess in all things — and with thoughtful con- 
sideration for the welfare of others, man over- 
comes temptation, thereby strengthening his own 
character. 

An entirely different phase of temptation is 
that which comes to man in the desire to be 
praised by men, and here the perversion of his 
highest development often occurs in order to 
gratify the vanity of the mind. Pride, envy, and 
jealousy are among the enemies to be met and 
conquered. We can not so easily define the 
temptations on this plane as on the plane below, 
for their name is legion, It is possible, however, 



156 Dominion and Power 

to determine whether an action is right or wrong 
by its effect on ourselves and others. Anything 
that confers a real personal good can not bring 
in its train an evil effect on some other life. 
Every good thought and every good deed have 
their centers in individual life, but in their actual 
working out they must bless the lives of many; 
but what works an injury to the many can bring 
no good to the individual. Every time one fore- 
goes a selfish desire and generously gives unto 
others of his fulness, life becomes easier, and the 
temptation of that desire ceases to vex and 
trouble the life. 

More subtle and far-reaching are the tempta- 
tions which come to man through the desire for 
riches and power. In the pursuit of riches man 
loses sight of the more vital meanings of life, 
and the Master was quite right in saying that it 
was harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom 
of heaven than for a camel to enter the eye of 
the needle. 

When one is tempted by the desire for wealth, 
the love of it entering the mind displaces the 
higher love which would work for the welfare of 
humanity. Great wealth is seldom, or never, a 
blessing, the responsibilities it brings are rarely 
fulfilled, and the law holds here, as well as in ail 
things, "To whom much is given, of him much 
shall be required." Very often wealth serves to 



Temptation as a Means of Growth 157 

develop the love of power over men, making its 
possessor a tyrant, depriving others not only of 
their worldly goods, but their mental freedom as 
well. Many seeking to find justification for the 
possession of great wealth, recount the good 
done by rich men; how much money they give 
to the support of charitable institutions, libraries, 
and schools for the education of the masses, as 
though this were enough in itself to offset all the 
misery and suffering caused to the many by the 
vast accumulation for the benefit of the one. 
There is a temptation even in giving, for the 
ostentation which brings the giver prominently 
before the public gratifies his pride, in that men 
speak well of him. 

In summing up the whole matter, we would 
say that under one of three heads comes every 
temptation which presents itself in life: the ap- 
peal to the sense-nature;, desire for the praise of 
men ; love of riches and the worldly power that 
riches give. 

We know how the Master met all these temp- 
tations. " Command that these stones be made 
bread," was answered, "Man shall not live by 
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth 
out of the mouth of God." " Cast thyself down" 
(from the pinnacle of the temple), and the an- 
swer was, " Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy 
God." 



158 Dominion and Power 

When riches and power were within the Mas- 
ter's grasp he said, "Thou shalt worship the 
Lord, thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." 

When we read that Jesus was tempted and 
tried like as we are, yet without sin, this story of 
the temptation in the wilderness shows that every 
possible temptation was offered and was over- 
come by the affirmation of man's true relation to 
God. There is a bread of life more essential to 
man than the bread which sustains his physical 
body. Man should never prostitute his God- 
given powers to win the praise of men. Riches 
and power should never tempt one from his 
allegiance and service to God. 

MEDITATION 

Our Father, Thou who dwellest in our own 
souls, help us to realize our oneness with Thee 
and our fellow-man, that every trace of selfishness 
may be dissipated and Thy will reign supreme 
in our lives. Thou hast given us both thought 
and feeling; Thou hast endowed us with many 
faculties of soul and mind, wherewith to work 
out our perfect salvation. We know that when 
we are at one with Thee, Thy will and purpose 
are made manifest in our lives; and no tempta- 
tion, however great, can prevail against us. Thy 
strength is our strength. We are strong in the 
Lord and in the power of His might. We desire 



Tempt atio?i as a Means of Growth 159 

that spiritual bread, Thy word, which shall sus- 
tain our souls in every hour of trial and temp- 
tation. We desire to use every gift which 
Thou hast given us, for Thy honor and glory. 
We desire the true riches which come through 
worship of Thee, and loving service to one 
another. 




PSYCHIC DEVELOPMENT 

" Said the Blessed One: * Verily, I say unto you, your mind 
is mental, but that which you perceive with your senses is also 
mental. There is nothing within the world or without which 
either is not mind or can not become mind. There is a spir- 
ituality in all existence, and the very clay upon which we 
tread can be changed into children of truth.' " 

— Gospel of Buddha. 

Man is, in a sense, related to two worlds : on 
one side, the world of form, a world of effect; 
and on the other side, the world of the invisible, 
a world of cause. In reality we are living in 
two worlds — a world of the seen and a world of 
the unseen. 

A word of explanation is perhaps necessary 
at this point. There are not two distinct and 
separate worlds, but two phases, I might say, of 
one world. We must get this distinction clear 
in mind of two sides in life — an inner and an 
outer. Some people live almost exclusively in 
the outer, some people live to a marked degree 
in the inner world. The people of our own 
country use concentration of mind to make 
their work effective in the outer world. The 
people in India and in some other countries use 
meditation to §uch a marked degree that they 
live very little in the so-called physical world. 

160 



Psychic Development 161 

Their desires and hopes are not placed in the 
physical, but rather in the unseen world. As I 
have explained before, it is only as we learn to 
live in both worlds, or in these two phases of 
life, and keep the mind thoroughly balanced 
between the two, that we become rounded out, 
that we become developed. 

We all know then a great deal about the 
physical side of life, but comparatively few peo- 
ple know much about the psychic side of life, 
and only in a very abnormal way, because the 
majority of all of the cases of so-called psychic 
development are brought about in an abnormal 
rather than in a normal way. 

The trouble with people is that they develop 
this psychic side of life in understanding the law 
that lies back of all development; but they do 
not know how to use the development that 
comes to them and sometimes put it to a wrong 
use. Again, many people seem to think that 
certain phases of psychic development corre- 
spond to, or rather are in reality, spiritual gifts 
of a very high order. Sometimes instead of 
being so they are just the reverse of spiritual. 
A great many people who believe in what they 
term the invisible world, are in reality more 
materialistic than the people who know nothing 
about an invisible world or care anything about 
it. Even the investigators of psychic phe- 



1 62 Dominion and Power 

nomena seem to lose sight of the one great side 
of this whole question — the spiritual develop- 
ment of man; and they would apply exactly 
the same law, the same processes of reaching 
satisfactory conclusions, that they would in any 
outer thing. 

But everything is changed here in this realm 
of the psychic and spiritual, and we are not 
going to be able to apply the same tests that we 
have used in the outer world. We are begin- 
ning to get nearer the cause of things. In the 
outer world we have been dealing exclusively 
with effects. It is always well to remember 
that science has never reached back of effects. 
Science has never at any point come in real con- 
tact with cause : that is, that with every scientific 
fact, it is a fact concerning the things of the 
outer and not the things of the inner. When we 
approach this inner side of life we have got to 
look at things from a very different point of 
view. In fact, if we are going to investigate the 
spiritual, we must do it with the spiritually en- 
lightened mind. There is no other way. 

A person may talk about these things for 
hours at a time, and yet be unable to make clear 
certain things which are more real to him than 
anything that eye can see or hand can touch — 
can in no way make them clear to the one with 
whom he is talking. 



Psychic Development 163 

It is just the same way when we re-ad our Old 
and New Testaments. We think that we know 
what the Old and New Testaments contain be- 
cause we can read them. We understand the 
meaning of the words, but the understanding of 
the meaning of the words and the ability to read 
are not enough. To all sacred writing there is 
an abstract side, and it is only as man has devel- 
oped the abstract side of his needs that he is 
able to perceive or understand the inner mean- 
ing of things. Now the Bible can never disclose 
the way of life to any one, no matter what one 
thinks about it. The way of life is first disclosed 
within the soul of man, and when there, then 
you will find it disclosed in the Bible. The Bible 
from first to last is a record of soul develop- 
ment, each soul giving its record according to 
its development and up to its limit of evolution. 
Taking all the records of the different stages 
and putting them together, we find that there is 
a way leading from what might be called the 
infancy of the soul to its perfect manhood. From 
the Adam to the Christ there are many stages 
in this way of life, and in so far as man has de- 
veloped he can understand these different stages; 
but beyond that he can not go until light comes 
into his own life. 

First of all, then, let us see that it is necessary 
to understand spiritual and psychic things 



164 Dominion and Power 

through the spiritual and the psychic; not 
through the spiritual side only. Not through 
the physical body, not through mental reason- 
ing, because, while these things are good and 
they have their place, the mind of man gets very 
little farther than the form of things. His every 
picture is for mental conception dealing with ex- 
ternal things. He deals with forms. There is 
not a word in our language but what if you go 
to the root of the word you find that it stands 
for a material thing — not for a spiritual state, 
but for a material thing. The mind deals with 
the material, but there is a soul side of life that 
transcends even mind, that is greater than 
thought or reason. 

Many people do not understand this psychic 
or the more spiritual side of life; people who 
never have passed through any psychic experi- 
ences say: Because we have never had such ex- 
periences there can be no such things. That is 
the way people reason and they consider these 
different psychic or spiritual experiences as sim- 
ply hallucinations, imaginations, and sometimes 
deliberate and wilful lies on the part of the one 
who testifies to such experience. 

It is not my object, therefore, to try and con- 
vince any one of the truth of these things. The 
truth must be found out by each individual. In 
dwelling on them, however, it may have this 



Psychic Development 165 

effect: that something within me might call out 
something within some one else. Now that is the 
one great object — not that I can give you any- 
thing, but that I may serve to call out something 
latent in your own life. The psychic or spirit- 
ual experiences of one person can not be given 
to another other than through mere words. We 
must pass through these things for ourselves, 
we must realize the truth of them for ourselves, 
just the same as no one in this world can work 
out another's salvation, but each individual must 
work out his own salvation. 

So it is with all these things. No one can give 
you the real knowledge of them. The real knowl- 
edge is within each individual life. It makes no 
difference what people have thought in the past 
as to where knowledge was located, it makes no 
difference if people place it in the outer world or 
in books or in authority. The knowledge of life 
is not there. The knowledge of life is in the soul 
of man, and the final authority of any question, 
or every question, is in your own souls — not 
outside of your souls, and in no minister, no 
priest, no bishop, no king. In fact, there is no 
authority outside of the life of man. We must 
get back to the real authority of life, and that 
authority is resident in the soul, and when we 
reach it, instead of asking others to decide ques- 
tions for us, we decide them for ourselves. This 



1 66 Dominion and Power 

is not egoism in the sense that we usually refer 
to the word. There is a divine egoism. There 
is this divinity within humanity which shapes 
the life of man. If we will only let the divine 
part of our being shape our lives, then we will 
express the God plan concerning us. 

I have said that a great many things consid- 
ered by people as spiritual gifts were in reality 
not so at all, because if they were spiritual, or 
highly spiritual, then it would require a spiritual 
mind to express these spiritual things. Very 
often we find minds that give no evidence of real 
spirituality wonderfully developed along certain 
psychic lines. 

Suppose, for example, that a man gets the 
thought of another en any question, and in every 
question, just as fast as the other can think, and 
answers questions that are only thought, not 
spoken aloud. This would not imply spiritual 
development at all, but psychic development. 

Again, there is this question of telepathy 
which some people seem to doubt at the present 
time, looking on it as something that has not 
been proved; but which many people with whom 
it occurs no longer consider even as a wonderful 
thing, because they experience it many times 
during a day. 

But these psychic gifts are not necessarily 
spiritual gifts. Certain sensitive-minded people 



Psychic Development 167 

can go through these experiences, in a sense be 
educated into them. That is, if certain powers 
which are latent in a person are called into a 
living existence, one may pass through all these 
phases of the psychic life. 

Clairvoyance and clairaudience are considered 
by many people as an evidence of spirituality. 
Now these things are not exactly spiritual. They 
deal with certain things which are not common 
to the majority of people, but because they are 
not common it does not follow that they are 
spiritual. Many people doubt clairvoyance and 
clairaudience. There are more people who doubt 
them than who doubt telepathy. But one can 
see that which to the physical eye is invisible, 
and hear that which to the physical ear is in- 
audible. Now the people who do see and hear 
psychically often think that they see with the 
physical eye and hear with the physical ear; but 
we have eyes and we have ears other than the 
physical. 

Remember, this body is only the counterpart 
of something else. There is a spiritual and 
there is an animal man. Now this body, this 
physical man with his five senses, is not nearly 
so real as the spiritual man. It is only the outer 
expression. It is not separated, it is not de- 
tached from the spiritual, but this physical body 
is an expression of something which is back 



1 68 Dominion and Power 

of it. Therefore, we have ears to hear if we 
would hear, and we have eyes to see; but this 
hearing and this seeing may not be spiritual. It 
can be spiritual sight and spiritual hearing, but 
of a necessity it may not be spiritual hearing or 
seeing ; because anything that is brought about 
in an abnormal way is not spiritual development. 

Some people may bring about clairvoyance 
through gazing in a mirror. By continually 
looking into a mirror, and in that way bringing 
about a state of abstraction, where one forgets 
all about the external, one does, to some degree, 
enter into the so-called invisible life, and certain 
things become evident there. After having 
seen them one may possibly doubt their exist- 
ence, and say that it is only an imagination of 
one's own mind, as most people do to a certain 
stage in their own development. There will be 
no doubt, as regards seeing and hearing psy- 
chically, if we develop in the true way. When 
the doubt enters the mind it is because of the 
want of true spiritual development. With the 
true spiritual development all the doubt goes 
out of the mind and one knows that he sees and 
hears ; and it makes no difference what other 
people think about it. 

It is because people work backward that we 
have this abnormal development. They are not 
working from the center but from the circum- 



Psychic Development 169 

ference. When a person takes a mirror to pro- 
duce clairvoyance, when a person takes a black 
mark on a wall to develop concentration, it is no 
true way to develop them. In all development 
there is a true end in the faculty of mind or soul 
that we use, and if there is no good end other 
than simply the development itself, we must i;se 
each mental faculty in the right way and we 
must use all our soul qualities in the right way. 
Then there will be no abnormal development 
coming into the life to make what we have re- 
ceived a serious disadvantage to the life instead 
of being an advantage. 

Many people believe that in mediumship there 
is something of a spiritual nature. There is 
nothing spiritual about it. It is simply hypnotism 
transferred to another plane where the medium's 
mind becomes subject to the mind of another. 
Because the person who impresses the mind of 
the medium has passed out of this body into 
the invisible, that does not make that person a 
spiritual being. If a man goes out of this world 
a liar he remains a liar. Whatever we have in 
mind when we go out of this world, we take that 
with us. A great many people believe that 
when they pass out of this world they are going 
to a beautiful heaven. If they have this heaven 
when they pass out they will have a beautiful 
heaven; but if they have it not, and find them- 



X70 Dominion and Power 

selves in a beautiful heaven, they will find they 
are out of place and that they have no use for it. 
We must take this into consideration. 

Again there is the violation of the law of God 
when one soul relinquishes its right to think and 
act to any other soul. This violation of the law 
of God has been going on for hundreds of years. 
Ministers have thought for people, they have 
worked out for people the way of salvation — 
that is, these people thought that ministers were 
doing this, but they never did. They have only 
to work out their own salvation. If they are 
doing that, they are doing all that God requires 
of them. Every man must work out his own 
salvation. While an enlightened man may 
throw light on the way of life, he must walk that 
way for himself. People have gone on allowing 
other people to think for them. If their thought 
seemed to come to them from the invisible, then 
they said, This is a wonderful thing and I must 
follow it 

There is nothing spiritual about this at all. 
Spiritual communication with life, here, comes 
in an entirely different way, and there is nothing 
in it that one would term the phenomenal. It 
comes through the highest feeling, it comes 
through the purest thought, it comes to uplift 
and brighten the life, it comes in such a way that 
there is none of this external manifestation. 



Psychic Development 171 

So, if we want to develop the psychic side of 
our nature let us understand first cf all that we 
must go to the fountain-head of things and seek 
to develop the highest within us. If we develop 
the highest all these other things will come in 
their natural order. If we are still working to 
bring out psychic development without any 
further use, we will find that when we have 
acquired certain psychic conditions they are not 
the things we want or need and they become a 
hindrance to the life rather than a help to it. 

The real psychic development cf life, then, 
must have its rise in God. Now when I say in 
God I want to be understood in this sense: that 
God is in the life of every man and every woman 
that cometh into the world. It is this divine spark 
in man, this grain of mustard seed, that finally 
becomes the pearl of great price. If we would 
cultivate this it would become a living spark in 
the life and change everything in the body of 
man. In other words we would be looking out 
from the center of consciousness, upon the great 
world about us, and know that we had dominion 
and power over all things. It is this God in man 
that has dominion and power over all things — 
has dominion over the mind of man and domin- 
ion and power over the spiritual world. 

We have it in ourselves to make life just what 
we will to make it, but in this will to change life 



172 Dominion and Power 

we bring about the true conditions in life. We 
must begin at the very center of things. It is 
not enough to stop short of the center of life. We 
must go deeper than that, we must go to the 
very center of our God-consciousness. We all 
have this God-consciousness. We may be asleep 
to the fact now, it may only be dimly in the 
mind cf others, but if we see this kingdom of 
God within us, then having found that, we have 
everything else that heart or mind can desire. 
I have said before that this was the message of 
Jesus to the world, and it is the one great mes- 
sage of life, that the kingdom of God is within 
the life of man, and that man can never hope to 
rule an outer kingdom in a successful way until 
he has attained to this inner kingdom. He can 
not acquire power to control outer conditions 
until he has come into the perfect control of his 
own mind. When he has come into the perfect 
control of his own mind then he has passed away 
from the human consciousness and has become 
universal. 

And there is this entering into the universal, 
becoming one with might, becoming one with 
the power of God, becoming one with the intel- 
ligence of God. Out of this condition of life 
come all the minor conditions, comes all the 
psychic development, will come this ability to see 
just as clearly in what is called the invisible world 



Psychic Development 173 

as to see- clearly in the visible world; to hear 
in the invisible just as much as to hear people 
speaking in this visible world. 

You enter into a new consciousness of life, 
you realize for the first time that this outer world 
is not the all-important world that we make it. 
You are no longer influenced, no longer con- 
trolled by external things. You realize that you 
are superior in every sense of the word to all the 
external, that the soul of man is greater than the 
world, that man has dominion and power over 
every external thing, whether you call it a rite, a 
form, or a creed. The soul is superior to it all, 
the soul makes all the true conditions of life. 

Do not let us deceive ourselves about these 
things. It is an easy thing to deceive one's self. 
People can so locate authority in the outer world 
that their whole life will be guided by the exter- 
nal, and they will never live, and never can, the 
life that man was intended to live. 

Remember, that the truth shall make ye free. 
Then shall ye be free indeed. 




LIVING THE SOUL LIFE 

" None of us yet know what fairy palaces we may build of 
beautiful thought * * * treasure-houses which care can not 
disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take a* ay from 
us — houses built without hands for our souls to live in." 

— John Ruskin. 

The Master once asked this question : " For 
what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul? or what shall a 
man give in exchange for his soul ? " The church 
has construed this as referring to future condi- 
tions. It says wrong-doing in the present will 
cause the soul to be lost in the future. 

The Christ thought is a very different one. 
It is this: What shall a man give in exchange 
for his soul ? What shall it profit a man if he 
lives in this world, becoming, one might say, a 
part of this world and thinking only of it — ac- 
quiring the wealth of the world, and at last 
finding out that he has not been doing anything 
to bring about his own development? What is 
it all going to profit him? If he gains in mate- 
rial wealth and in material means what is it going 
to profit him ? What good is it going to bring 
to his soul ? For we can not serve two masters 
and serve them both faithfully. We can serve 
faithfully but one master. 

174 



Living the Soul- Life 175 

The question then comes up in this way — as 
to whether it is better to take heed of our spirit- 
ual salvation or to go along in the world acquir- 
ing the things of the world. Now, the Master 
also said that we might lay up for ourselves 
riches in this world and that the time would 
come when these possessions would become 
moth-eaten, or rusty, or robbers would break 
in and steal them; but that we could lay up 
riches in life that no one could steal — riches that 
we could carry into another phase of existence. 
Of what is it going to profit even if one should 
gain the whole world and have dominion and 
power over all external things — in what way is 
it going to benefit him? Now, what is he going 
to give in exchange for the soul-life? 

The question, then, is between outer and in- 
ner conditions ; whether we prefer to dwell and 
think in the outer and live in the outer, and 
finally lose everything that we believe in or 
hope for, or whether we are going to lay 1 p 
riches that no one can take from us. So far as 
the soul itself is concerned it can never be lost; 
that is, lost beyond redemption. There is no 
such thing ; but we can become so absorbed in 
the world and the things of the world that we 
lose sight of ourselves, and the soul-life means 
little if anything to us. It is in this way we 
jose our souls. We lose the soul through giv- 



176 Dominion and Power 

ing it no thought, no attention. The fact is that 
we may be lost now — not that we are going to 
be lost in the future; because if we are living the 
soul-life in the present, then we have found life 
in reality; but if we are not living the soul-life 
then we are lost now. It is not a question of 
the future time at all, but a question of the 
present. 

More and more, as I study the science of be- 
ing, I have been convinced of the importance 
of what might be termed the inner life, what we 
are living and what we are. Less and less am I 
impressed by the importance of external things — 
riches, or knowledge, or social distinction. While 
all these things in themselves may express 
inner things they are not important to the life 
of man. There is only one thing which is all- 
needful in the life of man, and that is that 
he should be conscious — conscious in his own 
soul, conscious in his own life, that he can 
find his soul and find it now, and through find- 
ing it enter into a full satisfaction of life. By full 
satisfaction I mean the happiness, the health, 
the strength, and the perfection of life that may 
come now. Perfection is only a relative term, 
and we can go on from one state to another, 
from one state of glory to a still higher state of 
glory. This is the thing needful and this is the 
thing necessary in life. It is not so much a 



Living the Soul- Life 177 

question of any material condition, but physical 
health and physical well-being are all dependent 
upon those inner conditions of life. 

Instead of dealing with the surface of life, and 
instead of laying stress on the physical side, let 
us lay stress on the spiritual side of life and feel 
that in the spiritual we have the all-inclusive, 
that everything is summed up in the spiritual. 
All material good and mental good are summed 
up in the spiritual. 

Let us go right to the fountain-head of things, 
because in doing this there will come into the 
life, little by little, the inner harmony of being 
and the strength of being. Little by little, people, 
in this way, will become more Godlike, and they 
will understand the plan of life as they have 
never understood it before. They will see that 
the one great object in life is that man should 
manifest God, that man should be the perfect 
manifestation of God, the highest manifestation 
of God in this life. 

Now, when we see what is expected of us and 
how great a field is open in life, it should make 
us all anxious to show forth more of the God- 
life, more of the divine, knowing that in doing 
this will come our greatest happiness and the 
greatest good to mankind; because no one can 
be truly satisfied in life unless he is doing some- 
thing to benefit some one else. One might give 



178 Dominion and Power 

all the attention he likes to caring for and tlm ik- 
ing of self; but he can never get in life any real 
or lasting good or happiness through doing this. 
It is only as one cares for and as one thinks of 
others that real happiness flows into the life; be- 
cause man, as he becomes Godlike, loses the 
personal sense, and goes out, as it were, into the 
universal knowledge, the impersonal. He feels 
as though his life were one with the life of his 
fellow-man, one with every one's that he may be 
brought in contact with, and he will sacrifice, if 
needs be, his own life for the good of the many 
— that is as Jesus did. He will be willing to 
give up, if necessary, his physical body in order 
to be of benefit to mankind, and no physical 
thing shall come up that will in any way pre- 
vent him from being thoroughly Christlike in 
his life. 

In taking this course in life there is no ques- 
tion but what we will find opposition, because 
it is not the customary way of doing. The his- 
tory of the world has shown us that every per- 
son who has ever undertaken to do good to any 
marked degree to the world, who has given his 
life to the world and for the world, has been 
crucified in one way or another. People do not 
understand giving up one's self to the world in 
this manner. The world is always looking (and 
when I say the world I mean the self mind of 



Living the Soul- Life 179 

the world), is always thinking and believing in 
the present good, never taking the universal 
good into consideration at all ; and because the 
Christ-mind differs with the mind of the world 
then there is a clash. It has always been so. 
I do not believe that it will always be so, be- 
cause, as we grow, as mankind grows and comes 
into a higher knowledge of life, then this will all 
be changed. 

Let a person once think that he can be relig- 
ious through conforming to some outer thing, 
through believing in some creed, through doing 
anything other than living the Christ life, and 
when he gets such a notion as that into his mind 
then he has no use for the Christ life. The 
message of Jesus was a message of life, it was 
not a message of belief in any external thing. 
He made little of external things. He spoke 
even of the Sabbath. He said man was not 
made for the Sabbath, but that the Sabbath was 
made for man, for man was greater than any- 
thing. We find even one of his greatest disci- 
ples declaring that one man established one day 
and another man another day and yet all men 
established them alike. 

When each man is persuaded in his own heart 
concerning anything, then he has the highest 
authority for doing or for not doing. It is a 
question of the mind. The union of heart and 



i8o 



Dominion and Power 



mind gives us the union of perfect thought. 
People who lived five hundred or eight hunched 
years ago can not decide any question for any 
soul living on earth now. Each soul must de- 
cide for himself or we lose sight of the great fact 
of life. Remember, the question of life must be 
decided by us for us. By me for me y not by me 
for some one else, but by me for me. That is the 
only decision. Just so soon as I undertake to 
decide some question of life for you, then I am 
in a wrong position at once. 

We have accepted decisions from people, who, 
in many cases, if alive at the present time, we 
would not even care to associate with. Now, 
because Abraham and Moses said certain things, 
that does not follow that we must go on indef- 
initely accepting those things as being true. 
They may be true, remember, but they are not 
true because these men said that they were true. 
They are only true as they come from the 
divine source; but you say these men had ac- 
cess to the divine source. There was no time 
in the history of the world when people had ac- 
cess and then forever after that access was shut 
off. Sometimes we find David speaking fine 
words and then we find him saying things that 
some of the wickedest people might hesitate in 
saying. 

Therefore, I say that we can not take things 



Living the Soul- Life 181 

on authority. We must go to the real authority 
ot life — God speaking to us in our own lives. 
We must become, in other words, more individu- 
alized. By "more individualized," I do not 
mean that this will in any way tend to separate 
us from our fellow- man, but it will bring out all 
that is original and true in us. We will live 
our own lives, we will think for ourselves, and 
we will act for ourselves, and we will live the 
truth for the sake of the truth, not because David 
or Abraham or Paul or any one else said it, but 
because of the truth. It is the truth that makes 
man free, not what some one else believes; but 
it is the truth in the individual life that gives the 
freedom of life, and if we have not that truth in 
our lives, how are we going to be guided? Will 
it be by the sayings of some one else ? Well, 
one would take the sayings of Jesus, and another 
of Mohammed, another of Buddha. 

Now, there are not many sources for truth. 
Each soul may express truth to a greater or less 
degree. Jesus might have expressed truth to 
a wonderful degree, but remember, after all, it 
is not what Mohammed or Buddha or Jesus 
thought, but just what we think and just what 
we feel and what we know to be true. Remem- 
ber, if you think the truth and you know it to 
be true, and you realize it in all its fulness, then 
it will mean just as much to you as it did to 



182 



Dominion and Power 



Jesus or Buddha or any one else. It is the same 
truth and therefore must produce the same 
effect. We state that the same Mind must be in 
us that dwelt in Christ and the same Mind must 
think the same thought, must do the same deed. 
If it is the same Mind living in you, then you 
are Christlike, you are living the Christ life. I do 
not need to take as authority any one who has 
ever lived in the phase of this earth, because 
you have the authority of truth which is the 
final authority. 

We want, then, to know more of this inner 
life, this soul-life; to understand ourselves as we 
have never understood ourselves in the past; to 
see that this soul-life in ourselves is essentially 
divine, and that we are sons of God, and that we 
have an eternal inheritance, and that we have 
access to knowledge, wisdom, and understanding 
— the same knowledge and the same wisdom to 
which Jesus, the Christ, had access. 

Now, this was the claim that Jesus made for 
other people, not alone for himself but for 
others: that if we would do the will of God, as 
we understood it, then the way of life would be 
shown — not by some one else or by any book 
or conformity to anything, but simply by doing 
the will. 

We have, therefore, got to reconstruct, as it 
were, all our ideas of life. If we have thought 



Living the Soul- Life 183 

in the time past that wisdom and understanding 
came to us from without, through the study of 
books or through the study of some one else's 
life, we have got to see that only as we under- 
stand our own lives and our own relation to God, 
and our own relation to man and to the world in 
which we live, do we come into the God-wis- 
dom, into the God-knowledge. There is no 
other way. We may study the lives of all the 
saints and the apostles and the great teachers 
that ever lived, and when we get to the final 
matter, we will discover that it is all summed up 
in living the God life. 

Remember, the God life is not a personal life, 
it makes no difference what we think of it. The 
God life is in everything. It is only as we know 
that we are one with everything that we are be- 
coming one with the divine will. As we realize 
this, more and more is it going to bring out a 
real love of life, because we feel that we are one 
with what we love. The love-nature in man 
must of necessity grow. It must grow stronger 
and purer and must grow more ennobling to live 
up to, and it must make sacred everything in 
life, because everything in life is sacred. Every- 
thing is sacred. In all our relations to people in 
life there is that something which is sacred about 
those relations. Relation is the connecting link, 
though in reality there is no relation, for we are 



184 Dominion and Power 

one — one in life, one in thought, and one in pur- 
pose. We are one in everything. We are all 
seeking the same end. That end is the develop- 
ment of the soul, the realization of the unity of 
life. In one way or another we are all seeking 
this end when we shall know of a very truth that 
we are members one of another. 

This seems to be one of the great objects of 
life: the uniting, the blending, so that all men 
become as one, the universal mind acting in all, 
through all, and above all, working in us to will 
and to do, to bring about the freedom and the 
perfection of life, so that while each individual is 
perfectly free to do just as he thinks in every 
way, his thought is all centered on what he 
can do for others, not what he can do for 
himself, his heart at joy in that good he can do for 
others. This is like as it is in reality, not as it 
exists at the present time, but as God intended it 
should be. 

We are beginning to get a new incentive to life, 
we are beginning to find out that this craving to 
gratify the personal self is an abnormal condition 
of mind; that the normal condition is where we 
lose thought of self and think for others. We 
are beginning to see, too, that we can never be 
happy save as we make happy other people in 
the world. We are not going to pay any atten- 
tion to making our own lives happy, but we are 



Living the Soul- Life 185 

going to see how we can best bring happiness 
into the lives of others. 

The new world is coming. We are making 
this world day by day. One change follows 
another. This world is eventually going to be 
a much more beautiful world than it is at the 
present. It is a beautiful world now when we 
are in a beautiful frame of mind. It is only a 
gloomy world when we are gloomy. The inner 
heaven will have its type right in the world in 
which we live. Not that this will be the stop- 
ping-place for any soul, but that the soul while 
living on this plane will enter into a harmony 
such as the world has never experienced, and it 
will come in this way: First, an individual soul, 
with Jesus expressing its inner harmony, its inner 
beauty and inner strength, will go out to instil 
into other lives this harmony so that by and by 
the whole world will feel it, and the whole world 
will awaken, and the springtime of life will come, 
and people will enter into a new heaven, into the 
new world, and you will have God's kingdom 
here on earth; because, before the people who 
are living on this earth will pass away to another 
plane, they will have to transform the earth and 
will have to cause it to blossom as the rose. 

Righteousness must cover the whole earth. 
Man will never leave this plane of earth for a 
higher one until he has made this plane perfect, 



1 86 Dominion and Power 

until the manifestation of God in a perfect outer 
way shall have taken place. The manifestation 
is of the highest Godlike qualities in man and 
then again the Godlike qualities affect the very- 
state in which man lives, and, as the Scriptures 
have put it, the lion shall lie down with the lamb, 
and the bear shall eat grass; that is, all this 
ferocity in the animal life is, after all, only a type 
of that which exists in man, and all the fighting 
of the animal kingdom will be over when all the 
fighting in the human kingdom is over. 

Now, it has been given to man to rule the 
earth, to bring all things under his control, to 
have dominion and power over the very elements 
of the planet, to rule and control all things, and 
to be in subjection to but one — the universal 
will, and to be one with the universal will, acting 
in harmony with the law of God, so that all the 
storms and tempests which are on earth will all 
be gone with the coming of the new springtime 
of life, when man shall realize that he has do- 
minion and power over all things. And each in- 
dividual has it within himself, or within herself, 
to face that end, and, furthermore, to then have 
a knowledge of these things. 

It becomes a duty and a blessed privilege to 
aid in bringing about God's kingdom on earth. 
The coming of God's kingdom on earth is not 
going to be through bloodshed, it is not going 



living the Soul- Life 187 

to be through revolution, but through conscious 
evolution. We work with the law, understanding 
it, knowing of the law, and then obeying it, 
knowing the law as it discloses itself to us in our 
own lives and then conforming to it perfectly. 

And this is the way the new earth is coming 
into being. We have tried it in all the other 
ways, and all the other ways have failed. There 
remains this one great and only way: the recog- 
nition of God in the life, and then the recognition 
of God in everything in life, in our feeling and 
our thinking; and that we are one with God and 
one with man. In this way the fulness of the 
God life will enter into the human life, and we 
will all speak with new authority. 

There is nothing hidden that shall not be re- 
vealed. There is no hidden possibility in the life 
of man but it must sometime find this outer ex- 
pression so that man's inner word may be re- 
vealed to us in an outer word. There is both 
the inner word and the outer word; but the inner 
word is first and the outer word last. The king- 
dom of God is first in the soul of man and then 
the kingdom is afterward expressed upon the 
earth. If we have God's kingdom in our souls 
and realize that it is there, we will then make a 
new kingdom of God on earth. This is what 
comes to us all to do : to seek every possible way 
to make manifest God's kingdom on earth. 



IMMORTALITY 

"Every natural longing has its natural satisfaction. If 
we thirst, God has created liquids to gratify thirst. If we are 
susceptible of attachment, there are beings to gratify that 
love. If we thirst for life and love eternal, it is likely that 
there are an eternal life and an eternal love to satisfy that 
craving." __ p w> RoBERTSON# 

" How gloomy would be the mansions of the dead to him 
who did not know that he should never die; that what now 
acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think 

onforever -" -Johnson. 

The great Nazarene said, ''To know God is 
eternal life;" and we are told by one of his im- 
mediate followers that Jesus brought life and 
immortality to light. 

The question of immortality is one about 
which there has been a vast deal of speculation 
and discussion, pro and con. It was a question 
which agitated the minds of the people during 
the life of Jesus, and we find in the controversy 
that the Sadducees were arrayed on one side 
and the Pharisees on the other. Both Scribes 
and Pharisees had some faith in immortality. 
Among the early Christians there were dissen- 
sions, and the Apostle Paul based his theory of 
immortality on the law that if one rose from the 
dead then all must rise. 

183 



Immortality 189 

We might go ages back of the time of Jesus 
and find belief and disbelief in immortality. With 
the Egyptians and the Semetic races immor- 
tality was largely -conditional on the preserva- 
tion of the body. At a very early date the 
Hindu people had thoroughly imbibed the 
thought of immortality. Besides their sacred 
writings, the next best proof is the burning of 
their dead bodies, which would tend to show 
that their belief in immortality has been and is 
stronger now than among Christians; because 
Christians still continue to bury their dead, and, 
like the early Egyptians, make immortality to a 
large degree conditional upon the body. The 
church burial service still holds to the thought of 
the soul's returning to God who gave it and the 
body to the earth; and when, at some time in 
the distant future, the archangel Gabriel blows 
his trumpet, then shall soul and body be re- 
united. 

This phase of Christian theology is, if any- 
thing, more distinctively Egyptian than it is 
Christian. It is not at all in accord with Christ's 
idea, for he declared: "Destroy this temple and 
in three days I will raise it up." We find that 
Jesus, when questioned on one occasion, said, 
" Before Abraham was I am," and when those 
opposing him retorted by saying that Abraham 
had been dead these many years, he answered 



190 Dominion and Power 

that God is not the God of the dead, but a God 
of the living. 

Jesus said to know God was eternal life, and 
not through knowing Him separate or apart 
from our life, but through feeling His presence 
ever with us, realizing that we are one with all 
life and intelligence. To Jesus there was no 
separation: "I in thee, and thou in me, that we 
may be made perfect in the One." The thought 
of Jesus was an animating, intelligent force ever 
present in his own life, that had power to lay 
down the physical form or take it up. 

There is proof that a great majority of the 
early Christians believed in an immortality 
which was in no way conditional upon the 
body. They looked at the physical form as 
being fitted for the needs and requirements of 
this earth, but they had been taught that in the 
Father's house were many mansions, and that 
in the laying aside of the fleshly garments they 
would become clothed with spiritual garments; 
that, though the tabernacle of this house was 
dissolved, they had a building not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens. 

The New Testament thought of immortality 
is based on the oneness of life and intelligence. 
It lays little if any stress on the resurrection. 
The church has forgotten about the spiritual 
resurrection of Jesus, but it has celebrated for 



Im mortality j q i 

many hundreds of years the physical resurrec- 
tion. It was not the same body that went into 
the tomb that came out of it, but that body he 
was free to make appear or disappear at will. 
Some may contend that the marks of the nails 
in the hands and feet and of the spear in the 
side were in themselves sufficient to prove that 
it was the same body. To offset that, again, the 
body was not recognized by Mary at the tomb, 
was not recognized by the disciples who jour- 
neyed with him a half day's journey. We have 
many instances of stigmata, where, through 
dwelling on the thought of the crucifixion, peo- 
ple have had the prints of the nails in their own 
hands and feet. 

Remembering that Jesus said the spirit is the 
quickening power, the flesh of no profit, we 
must see in the resurrection a deeper meaning 
than that which is purely physical, and that the 
resurrection is above all things a spiritual resur- 
rection. That is what Jesus meant when he 
said, "If I be lifted up and attain the Christ 
eternally, I will draw all men unto me." 
Through the evolution of the same eternal and 
unchanging love that brings the spiritual resur- 
rection, shall all men attain to it. There is no 
separation between the human and the divine. 
The resurrection of Jesus was a spiritual resur- 
rection, the passing from the consciousness of 



193 Dominion and Power 

the partial to the consciousness of the whole, 
the divine; the laying aside of everything that 
could hamper or hold the soul in bondage. 

The misconceptions which followed the orig- 
inal Christian ideas, came from putting a too 
literal construction on the allegorical book of 
Revelations and the loss of the spirit of religion 
which had animated Christian bodies up to the 
time of Constantine the Great. A study of 
church history will show that from this time 
the spirit was lost sight of and the church lived 
in the dead letter of Christian thought. In the 
dark ages superstition and materialism combined 
to utterly destroy all that was vital and true, so 
that scarcely a vestige of the Christ religion 
was to be found in the church. While the 
Reformation tended to bring back something 
of the old spirit of religion, nevertheless, no 
real light came from it on the subject of immor- 
tality. 

Eventually, it may be found that the thing 
which at one time seemed likely to destroy 
man's belief in immortality, namely, scientific 
research and investigation, will become the 
great factor in causing the minds of people to 
return to a belief in it, or something more than 
a belief; because the scientific mind of the 
present time is waking to the fact that the ma- 
terial world is not all, that there are forces, 



Immortality 193 

powers, at work in the universe which transcend 
all material things. 

The question of the present is not, What is 
matter? but, What is Spirit? When we have 
answered the last question we shall have the 
key to the first, because we can not know in 
reality what an effect is without knowing some- 
thing of the cause; and when we know the 
cause of any given effect we shall be able to un- 
derstand that effect. Scientific thought and in- 
vestigation have done much in the arrangement 
and classification of form, but they have gone 
nearly as far in that direction as it is possible to 
go, and are taking up, and will take up to a 
still greater degree, the things that are super- 
sensuous. 

Conservation of force and the indestructibility 
of matter tend to show that in the great econ- 
omy of nature nothing is ever lost. We see 
people walking about on this earth endowed 
with animating life and physical form, and we 
assert that not one atom in these forms can 
cease to be, nor one particle of energy be lost. 
We are conscious of an intelligence controlling 
and directing the physical organism in every 
part, and everything leads us to believe that it 
is in all ways superior to the outer form. Sci- 
entifically, we are coming to know that this 
intelligence created, or brought into existence 



194 Dominion and Power 

and gave being to the very form which it now 
controls. 

The law of evolution goes to prove that for 
ages life has been tending from lower to higher 
stages — differentiation after differentiation taking 
place until in the fulness of time man appeared 
on the earth. At any stage in evolution we 
shall find intelligence displayed in the construc- 
tion of form, this intelligence ever tending to 
adapt the form to the requirements of its envi- 
ronments. 

Is it logical, is it scientific, to say that with 
the passing of the form this intelligence ceases 
to be, or becomes dissipated? Of course some 
may retort that as the physical form becomes 
dissipated, why not the intelligence? But for 
that matter there are dissipation and renewal of 
the physical form taking place all through life, 
and yet greater intelligence is constantly evolv- 
ing, and what takes place at the so-called death 
is only dissipation in a greater degree. Further- 
more, it is a well-known fact that the minds of 
people are often clear and active when the life 
of the body is nearly gone. 

The people who would have us believe that 
this little span of life is the beginning and end of 
all, and that the physical brain is the mind of 
man, often bring up such illustrations as an 
injury to the brain, a fracture of the skull, or 



Immortality 195 

something of the kind, interfering with mental 
action; and these they think tend to prove con- 
clusively that with the entire destruction of the 
brain comes the entire destruction of mind. 
Again, they have cited the circumstances where 
the brain has been trepanned and there has been 
a return of thought and reason. This, instead 
of tending to prove their case, in reality proves 
the reverse. It shows that the mind requires a 
perfect instrument through which to work, and 
when that instrument has been damaged it can 
no longer function in a proper way; but with a 
return to normal conditions it again resumes its 
natural activities. It would not be possible to 
enumerate the cases of people who, while in a 
state of trance, where physical animation was 
aknost entirely suspended (so much so that 
attendants could not tell whether life was en- 
tirely extinct or not), when the life-principle 
returned to the body, have recounted many and 
varied experiences through which they passed 
during the interval, 

Surely, this could not have been the result of 
any physical brain-action. If we had no greater 
proof of life after the passing away of the physi- 
cal form than this, such testimony should go a 
long way toward establishing it. Again, there 
are the many cases of people who have recovered 
from severe sickness and who, while apparently 



196 Dominion and Power 

suffering, have not been conscious of that suffer- 
ing, but have had a marked consciousness of 
things other than this world. Of course the 
advocate of materialism will declare that such 
things were the hallucinations of a weakened or 
diseased brain. 

The great trouble with the skeptics and agnos- 
tics, who array themselves in opposition to the 
thought of continued life, is that they are not 
honest in being unwilling to examine into the 
facts of the case, or else, if doing so, arrogate to 
themselves an arbitrary way of reaching their 
conclusions. They can bring no proof which will 
in any way tend to substantiate their own views, 
but only dogmatic assertions that the people who 
believe in immortality are either knaves or 
fools, and that they have no reasonable grounds 
whatever for their belief. It is folly to quote 
Jesus, Buddha, Socrates, Paul, Swedenborg, or 
any other great mind that has ever lived on the 
planet. If an angel from heaven should appear 
he would not be able to change their conceited 
arrogancy. Instead of being agnostics, what 
other people have known, believed, and taught, 
they declare to have been all false; in fact, they 
believe that they know everything. Wherever 
a great scientific mind, like Alfred Russell Wal- 
lace or Camille Flammarion, takes up the study 
of the more spiritual side of life and considers it 



Immortality 197 

in an unprejudiced way, it becomes only a ques- 
tion of time when his investigations lead him 
to believe in and accept the thought of immor- 
tality. 

The orthodox Christian ideas of immortality 
are both vague and unsatisfactory. Their par- 
ticular regulations for the continued existence of 
those who accept what they are pleased to term 
the Christian faith and those who reject it, are 
neither in accord with the teachings of Jesus nor 
his immediate followers. In their blindness they 
misconstrue parable and allegory, thus getting 
meanings that were never intended, and sending 
the Pharisees to a heaven of everlasting bliss 
while the publicans are doomed to eternal pun- 
ishment. 

This thought of immortality is neither Christ- 
like nor true. The Christ thought is that the 
lost sheep will be brought back to the fold, that 
the prodigal son's sufferings will so help to bring 
true desire into his mind that he will return to 
his father's home, that the eleventh hour laborer 
in the vineyard will receive the same compensa- 
tion as any other, and that God's love and mercy 
endureth forever; but that man must prepare the 
soul of his own life for the perfect reception of 
the spirit of God. And that when he becomes 
conscious of that spirit it brings with it a realiza- 
tion ot his sonship to God; that every stage in 



198 Dominion and Power 

life had been a necessary one; that the way to 
God is from man's very lowest earthy nature to 
his very highest heavenly nature; that every step 
in this way is one step toward God, and that the 
love for the righteous and unrighteous is one 
love, and will save even to the uttermost. 

In the Christ gospel life and immortality are 
clearly revealed. A time will come when we 
shall wonder how we could have misunderstood 
it and made of it something just the reverse. 

The church doctrine of immortality is only a 
useless encumbrance without life or meaning. 
There is also an exceedingly vicious side to it in 
that it condemns to eternal punishment the vast 
majority of people who pass out of the world, 
and holds out a reward for a blind belief in doc- 
trines which are in no way essential to the life. 

Life and immortality are not for the few, but 
for all; and this little earth-life is not the begin- 
ning nor end of man's destiny. Through the 
countless ages of the past man has been work- 
ing up to what he is, and in the ages to come 
he will grow into an ever-increasing life. The 
thought of immortality is inherent in each fibre 
of man's being, and, try as he may, he can not 
get away from it. To the wrong doer, who 
knows that every wrong act brings with it its 
own reward, and that the seed of vicious thought 
will bring a harvest of pain and suffering, the 



Immortality 199 

outlook may not be fraught with delightful 
anticipations ; but that suffering will, in the end, 
prove beneficial in bringing him at last to a 
knowledge of his real duties to God and man. 

Jesus, the Christ, passed through the same 
trials and temptations that we do, and it was 
only through meeting those trials and tempta- 
tions and overcoming them that he was able to 
rise above the law of sin and death, that law 
which people had believed in hundreds, yes, 
thousands, of years. He passed from under its 
dominion and came under the dominion of the 
law of the spirit of life which frees from sin and 
death. 

A New Testament writer says that it is the 
action of this latter law that all must come under; 
that we are all sons of God and joint heirs with 
Christ; that Jesus was the first fruits of them 
that slept ; that we all sleep in the earthy man, 
and that all must awake in the eternal man ; that 
Jesus through his life and teaching brought life 
and immortality to light, but that life and im- 
mortality had been from the very foundation of 
things, and that they had been throughout eter- 
nity; that in the Adam or earthy man we all 
die to a knowledge of our true relation to God, 
so, when we awaken in the Christ spirit that is in 
our own lives, then we come into the fulness of 
life and understanding; that the old things pass 



200 Dominion and Power 

away ; that we no longer place our trust in any 
form or on anything external to ourselves, and 
that life and intelligence are eternal and that 
there is no separation, either in this world or in 
any other. 

And this same writer tells us that life is one. 
The form changes and passes away, but the soul 
is one with God. Since by man came death by 
man came also the resurrection of life. If there 
were a period in the evolution of man when he 
had no conscious knowledge of God — a period 
that could be spoken of as death when man be- 
lieved in the law of death — then through man's 
overcoming this law, through his becoming con- 
scious of another law in his own life, the law of 
the spirit of life, he becomes the first fruits of 
them that slept. 

This does not take away anything from Jesus, 
it is not even a failure to see the divine in Jesus 
when we see the human disappear, the divine 
coming in view. In the early part of the mis- 
sion of Jesus he referred to himself over and 
over again as the son of man, but toward the close 
of that mission he calls himself the Son of God, 
and when .he was accused of blaspheming by the 
people, he answered them in this way : " Is it not 
written in your law, I said, Ye are gods, if he 
called them gods, unto whom the word of God 
came, and the Scripture can not be broken." 



Immortality 201 

You see it is essential that the word of God 
should come into the life before there can be a 
realization of the oneness with God. With 
Jesus it is God's will, God's intelligence, God's 
power acting in and through him. He knows 
that he is one with God and that he has eternal 
life and eternal power and that he has come 
under the real law of life. There is perfect order 
in the life of man as there is in the life of a plant 
Some plants come to maturity in a short time 
and others take a long time. There are law and 
order in all things. There is a natural develop- 
ment going on in the evolution of the inner 
hidden possibilities of man. A time comes in his 
life when he shall have brought everything into 
subjection, when he shall have dominion and 
power over all things, and the last enemy to be 
overcome is death. 

We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be 
changed in the twinkling of an eye. The time 
will come when we all will have attained all the 
knowledge of this earth, when we will have 
power to lay aside these human forms without 
sickness, without disease, without any great 
effort. We will have power to lay down and 
take up, though man must reign until he has 
put all enemies under his feet. 

These words do not refer to any particular 
man, but to the great universal life of man, not 



202 Dominion and Power 

to any one soul but to all souls of which Jesus 
was the first fruit. Remember, that in the real 
temple of God we are all parts, but each part 
has, in a way, to demonstrate that which the 
whole must eventually demonstrate, and when all 
individuals have done this, then will man, the 
universal man, have attained to dominion and 
power, and will be subject to God and God 
alone, that God may be all in all. 

I heard a minister say, some time ago, when 
a body was being buried, that the soul had gone 
to God and that the body would rest in the 
tomb until the resurrection day, when soul and 
body would be reunited. When the body passes 
away it goes into countless forms of one kind or 
another. If we were going to live on this planet 
again, there might be some possible reason for 
taking up the old body, but just think of some 
of the bodies that would have to be taken up ! 

There is no thought of the resurrection of the 
physical body in the real Christian doctrine of 
life. Jesus and his disciples never taught it. 
This body is of this earth and it will never go 
further than this earth. We have bodies cor- 
responding to where we belong. The great truth 
is that the spiritual resurrection and immortality 
are hidden in God, are in the thought of life as 
one, and that life is everlasting; that the life and 
power are the ever-present indwelling God, and 



Immortality 203 

through knowledge of His presence it is given 
us to shape the individual life in such a way as 
to at least overcome, to rise above, the law of 
sin and death. We must lay all stress on the 
spiritual resurrrection, the resurrection of knowl- 
edge and the life eternal, and that the law that 
brings one soul into its spiritual freedom will 
bring all souls ; that as in Adam all die even so 
in Christ shall all be made alive. 

MEDITATION 

Immortal and Eternal Spirit of love, Father of 
all, in Thee, through Thee, and by Thee are all 
things lived. There is no life or understanding 
apart from Thee. There is nothing in Thy uni- 
verse, so distant or so small, but is animated by 
Thy life and controlled by Thy intelligence. 
Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto 
night showeth forth knowledge. All Nature is 
Thy open book, all Nature lives and moves in 
Thee. 

We pray for a higher consciousness of Thy 
abiding presence in our lives, that we may know 
Thee and feel Thy love as the animating pres- 
ence of our being; that we may comprehend Thy 
wisdom so that our lives may be directed aright, 
and that we, through such conscious feeling and 
knowledge, may realize eternal life, through 
knowing that Thy life and our lives are in no 



204 



Dominion and Power 



sense separate, and that Thou dwellest in us, and 
we in Thee, and that the soul of man and the 
soul of God are one. 

With such consciousness, death loses its sting 
and the grave has no victory; but man becomes 
triumphant over death, and attains to that do- 
minion and power, which is latent in him from 
the beginning. 

Who can feel Thy wondrous love, who can 
attain Thy infinite knowledge? Can the part 
understand the whole? Can the finite compre- 
hend the infinite ? Only as the consciousness of 
the finite and the partial passes out of the life 
of man and he realizes his divinity, his oneness 
with the soul of the universe, can he come into 
direct communion with Thee, and feel Thy love 
which passeth understanding, and comprehend 
Thy wisdom which is not partial, but all-com- 
prehensive. Becoming one with Thee, becoming 
one with Thy eternal love and life, he dwells 
forever in the universal soul, and humanity be- 
comes lost in divinity. The temporal is past and 
only the eternal remains. Death is swallowed 
up in life, because Thou, O Father, art All 
in all. 






DOMINION AND POWER 

44 The glorious consummation toward which organic evolu- 
tion is tending is the production of the highest and most per- 
feet psychical life." -John Fiske. 

4 ' My mind to me a kingdom is. " — Epictitus. 

For many years man has been studying the 
mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms ; but in 
all his investigations he has overlooked what is 
greater than all else — man himself. The most 
important pursuit in all this world is the study 
of man. It will repay the diligent student far 
more than any other line of research. " Know 
thyself," said a wise man in ancient times ; and 
he might have added, "you will know all other 
people; you will know all else, because in this 
human mind — in this soul of ours — is contained 
everything to be found in the outer world." 

To know ourselves the investigation must be 
carried on in a manner quite different from that 
governing all other lines of study. To know 
ourselves as we are we must set aside pride of 
self, we must examine into everything carefully 
and minutely. We need to know the cause of 
all man's varying emotions and the motives that 
prompt him to follow certain courses — such as 

205 



206 Dominion and Power 

shutting his mind to certain thoughts and events 
and opening it to others. In the past we be- 
lieved what we wished to believe, without regard 
to its truth. A certain body of men had pro- 
mulgated certain doctrines, and we took them 
for granted ; we accepted them as the truth with- 
out investigation. Our ministers and our doc- 
tors have done our thinking for us. But this 
condition is rapidly passing away, and each indi- 
vidual soul is beginning to think and act for 
itself. The trammels that hitherto have bound 
the soul are being thrown aside. 

In the study of man, a careful, thoughtful in- 
quiry into the matter by one's self is necessary — 
not taking anything that others say as the in- 
disputable truth, but investigating and seeing 
whether another's idea of truth appeals to the 
inquirer's highest sense of right, and whether it 
will prove beneficial if accepted. 

The idea of storing up something for the 
future is exploded. What we want are health, 
strength, and happiness, here and now. The 
idea of going through the world with a long 
face, thinking it indicates religion, no longer 
passes current. The religion of Christ is a 
religion of hope, not despair; yet the majority 
of Christians carry about on their faces the 
opposites of brightness and happiness. We 
must investigate in the true way. Because 



Dominion and Power 207 

It is through wonderful thought-power 
that the Hindu adepts perform many of their 
remarkable feats. Indeed, the wonders transpir- 
ing every day, strange as they appear, are but 
trifling in comparison to those that will yet be 
disclosed through the human mind. We do not 
even dream in the present of the powers and 
possibilities of mind. We have power in our own 
souls to transform our bodies; to quicken the 
action of the heart and the blood; to strengthen 
every part of the body; and so to increase in 
knowledge of things good and true that ere long 
we may absolutely control our bodies. 

Now, it is the application of this science — first 
to mental and then to physical conditions — that 
we wish to consider. And if we will carefully 
and thoughtfully examine into these matters, and 
then live in accordance with our knowledge, 
there is not one among us who may not be bene- 
fited both mentally and physically. Man is ruled 
just as absolutely by the laws of God as are the 
planets and the suns. It is knowledge of these 
laws and obedience thereto that bring health, 
strength, and happiness. There can be no health 
nor happiness aside from conformity to the laws 
of God. In vain shall we seek for these bless- 
ings elsewhere. 

Spiritual scientists claim that there is one great 
life-principle, which is in all, through all, and 



*o8 Dominion and Power 

above all. Exoteric science speaks of this prin- 
ciple as energy, or force; Christian people call it 
God; Hindus speak of it as Brahm. But they 
all mean exactly the same thing — "the Power 
that makes for righteousness," as Matthew Arnold 
aptly puts it. It is that "infinite and eternal 
Energy" of Herbert Spencer's belief. Every 
soul represents a part of it — therefore the Whole; 
in other words, it is " God working within us to 
will and to do." Our bodies, in turn, represent 
the force within us. The body is the outgrowth 
of the mind ; hence, the mind can make it what 
it will. If in the past we have made errors, and 
as a result of them have a weak or diseased body, 
then we have the power to correct those errors. 
We have the power to make our bodies what we 
will, if our will be in accord with the divine will. 
It is the power of God within us. There is no 
other power. Everything in the universe gives 
evidence of it. It is in the mineral, the vegeta- 
ble, and the animal kingdoms, and is found in 
the highest degree of manifestation in man. 

Spiritual science, therefore, rests on the foun- 
dation that there is but one supreme life-force in 
the universe. It naturally follows that there can 
be but one Intelligence, and that every sentient 
thing must manifest a certain degree of that In- 
telligence. We find the degrees varying all the 
way up from the mineral to the animal king- 



Dominion and Power 209 

dom — different degrees of manifestation ; yet one 
power, one God, working in all. "I the Lord 
am God, and besides me there is none else/' It 
is a realization of this infinite potency in our own 
lives that will bring health and strength; it is 
the knowledge that we have the power of God 
within us — the power of all the universe work- 
ing with us — that gives strength of mind and 
health of body. We realize that it is not possi- 
ble to be separated from this eternal source; that 
we are one with all power; and that the whole 
force of God's universe is working with us, not 
against us. 

The idea of a God afar off, a God of whom we 
know but little, is not the true idea ; it is not the 
Christ idea, which was that "the Spirit quicken- 
eth," and quickeneth every part of our being. It 
is this spirit of God within us that brings health 
and strength; therefore, it is necessary first to 
realize the power of God in our own lives — to 
feel that we are one with it, and that all the in- 
telligence we have is derived from this one 
source. Knowing God in this way brings eter- 
nal life, since we realize that if a part could cease 
to be the whole would cease to be; hence, man's 
heaven consists in a realization of the spirit of 
God in his own life, and that knowledge brings 
a consciousness of eternal life. 

One of the greatest of all questions that man 



2 1 o Dominion and Power 

has had to consider in the past is his attitude 
toward evil. Now, certain knowledge can be de- 
rived only from what we term evil. Evil is just 
as much a necessity in the world, to show man 
the good and true, as darkness is to reveal the 
presence of light. Evil indicates the absence of 
good, as ignorance indicates the absence of 
knowledge. We would have no idea of the 
beauties of light, of truth, of love, if their contra- 
dictories had not existed — if there were no dark- 
ness, no error, no hatred. And the reason is 
that we compare one with the other. If it were 
always darkness we would have no word for 
light — it would have no meaning. If people 
always told the truth we would have no word 
for truth. 

It is only through the contradictory that we 
learn of the reality. Having once learned the 
reality, the unreality (the contradictory) becomes 
meaningless. But so long as we endow it with 
the same power as the reality, just so long will 
it have that degree of influence over us. 

The great lesson for mankind to learn is the 
reality of good and the nothingness of " evil." 
There is no way of overcoming the false, unreal 
conditions of life (the evil) save through good. 

For thousands of years the world has vainly 
tried to overcome evil by evil. Can we over- 
come darkness by darkness ? No; only through 



Dominion and Power 2 1 1 

light. Overcome evil by good ; overcome igno- 
rance by knowledge. When we ha ^ e overcome 
the ignorance, the evil, and the darkness of the 
past, they will disappear; and the reason is plain: 
two ideas can not dwell in the mind at one and the 
same time. If the mind is filled with thoughts 
of good and of truth, there is no possible room 
for those of evil or of falsehood. If a room is filled 
with light, all the darkness of the outer world 
can not dispel one particle of that illumination; 
therefore, if we keep our lives surrounded by the 
light- — if we keep the light burning within — there 
is no power without that can dispel it. We have 
the power to shut off the light within ourselves; 
but no other soul in all the world can do it for 
us, because that light is a living reality that can 
not be overcome from without. 

We next come to the development of certain 
mental powers, or, rather, soul powers, because 
we have faculties transcending those purely men- 
tal. We find that through their development 
will come our greatest good, and that no single 
power occupies the same place as that of the 
will, which is the greatest force in the life of man 
when rightly directed. The will is the actual 
Self of man — the real man ; and when it finds its 
true direction there arises a power that over- 
comes the false will. It is the development of 
this will to which Jesus referred. He recognized 



212 Dominion and Power 

the contradictory will — purely human, and to be 
overcome. He said, "Not my will, but Thine 
be done." To recognize the will of God as the 
supreme factor in our lives is of the utmost im- 
portance. We may not say we do things of our- 
selves — Jesus never said that. He said: "Of 
myself I can do nothing. The Father working 
within me, He doeth the work." 

Next in importance to the will comes the 
imaging faculty. If man uses this faculty aright 
(for we are now dealing with a faculty of mind, 
not of soul), he will obtain nothing from it save 
that which is good. Every ill, or evil, that enters 
into the life of man comes through the misuse 
of his imaging faculty., While everything is 
good in itself, it is only good as it is used aright. 
When man attempts to combine the different 
images from this outer world, though each in 
and of itself is good, he may produce evil through 
untrue combinations. For example, a web of 
cotton in itself is perfectly harmless; but by 
adding to it certain acids we can make gun- 
cotton and with it destroy a building. The force 
in the cotton is liberated in an instant, and that 
liberation causes the destruction. There is more 
sunshine — more force — in cotton than in any 
other manufactured substance; and if that force 
be suddenly liberated the results are terrible. 

Pictures of sorrow and evil fill the mind with 






Dominion and Power 213 

anxiety, malice, hatred, jealousy, etc., and cause 
most of the distress of life. If we could but see 
that every experience that enters into the life of 
man comes for a good purpose— to show him 
something higher, better, and truer; if we could 
realize that all things are working together for 
good — then we might not have to undergo cer- 
tain experiences that bring suffering. We would 
see that they contain lessons, and our great ob- 
ject would be so to profit by them that the 
experiences need not be repeated. But they 
will continue to recur until the lesson of life is 
learned. 

If we image in our minds the good and true, 
we will obtain the good and true as results; be- 
cause the mind first makes these pictures, and 
they afterward express themselves in the physical 
structure of man. We are suffering to-day from 
the evil pictures of the past. If we have filled 
our minds with fear, envy, anger, etc., we suffer, 
and wonder why we should be so afflicted. We 
wonder if God has sent these afflictions upon us, 
whilst we bring them upon ourselves as the re- 
sult of false mental images. 

When we use this imaging faculty aright we 
picture nothing save the good and true; hence 
we express that which is good and true on the 
body. The body is transformed through this 
" renewing of the mind." In no other way can 



214 Dominion and Power 

we "present our bodies a living sacrifice" save 
through this direction of soul and mind faculties. 
There is no medicine known to-day that will 
bring health or salvation to any soul or body. 
No medical doctor can say truthfully that the 
system that he represents is founded on law. 
The law is that everything must work from 
within outward. We must work from the inner 
being to the outer. Man must be controlled by 
his spiritual faculties if he expects ever to be 
well and strong. There is no other way. 

Faith and hope also enter into this subject. 
What is faith ? Many think that it is belief in 
something that some one else has said. Others 
hold that faith is a belief that Jesus died two 
thousand years ago ? and that in some way that 
belief will free them from all future trouble. 
"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou 
shalt be saved." What does that mean? It does 
not mean the kind of belief just mentioned. We 
are told that "the blood of Christ cleanseth from 
all sin." The word Mood always signifies " life." 
The life of Christ, as we make it manifest, is that 
which cleanses from sin. 

Belief in an event that occurred two thou- 
sand years ago is not going to save a man. 
Salvation that exempts the body is no salva- 
tion at all; for a Christian going about with 
a weak body is not manifesting the Christ na- 



Dominion and Power 215 

ture. We never hear of Christ as being weak 
or sick. Faith is sometimes founded on knowl- 
edge, not credulity; but most of the faith we 
have at present is founded on some one else's 
belief. True faith is always founded on personal 
knowledge; we never hear persons say they 
have faith in a man, and yet have no knowledge 
of him. 

Knowledge of the power of God in our lives 
gives us both health and strength. Then our 
faith is real, and greater blessings may come 
into our lives because of our knowledge of Ivth 
past and present that constitutes faith. 

Wherever we find faith, we find hope; because 
faith apart from hope is not conceivable. If the 
mind is filled with faith in God, then it is filled 
with hope. The person that goes about with a 
gloomy face, talking over depressing things, has 
neither faith nor hope. These qualities are 
essential in the life, and the more faith and hope 
one has in both God and man the better his life 
will be. The man that has little faith in his 
fellow-man is not the one to trust. The more 
faith we have in one another — the more of God 
we recognize in one another — the better it is for 
us. The more of God we see in others the more 
of the divine we show in ourselves. 

Finally, we come to the influence that one 
mind may have upon other minds. Every 



2l6 



Dominion and Powt* 



thought we think has some effect upon the lives 
of others. It is bound to affect other people 
either for good or ill ; and when we realize the 
responsibility thus placed upon us we should use 
our thought-power with the greatest care. 
Every true thought that enters the soul is an 
angel that will carry peace and good-will to 
some other soul; and every evil and hateful 
thought that enters the mind is going out to 
increase the darkness and despair of other souls. 
If we think true thoughts we need not care 
about the external word and deed. Both word 
and deed will take care of themselves through 
true thinking. 

Phillips Brooks said truly that "it is only to 
man, daring to think of himself nobly, divinely, 
aye, as the son of God, that there comes the 
possibility of putting his human powers to their 
perfect use. Character and service both fling 
their doors wide open to him that knows him- 
self to be the son of God." 




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